NATO chief said four U.S. Army soldiers were killed in a movement near the Lithuanian-Belarus border.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Wednesday that four U.S. Army soldiers were killed during a training exercise in Lithuania. The U.S. Embassy in Vilnius said in a statement posted on social media earlier that the four soldiers disappeared during training, thanks to the military and police of the Baltic countries for helping the U.S. military search for them.
One U.S. official would only say that the four soldiers were involved in a training accident.
“This news broke that four American soldiers were killed in a incident in Lithuania,” Rut told reporters in Warsaw. “It’s still early news, so we don’t know the details. It’s really horrible news, our ideas are with our family and loved ones.”
The U.S. Embassy said in its social media post that troops disappeared from a training area near Pabrade, near Belarus, near the Lithuanian Far Eastern border, a country Closely related to Russia. The embassy did not say when the soldiers disappeared.
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The embassy’s statement said: “The soldiers were from the 1st Brigade of the Third Infantry Division and were undergoing scheduled tactical training at the time of the incident.”
Lithuanian news media Delfi said soldiers disappeared along with a tracked vehicle, usually referring to tanks or armored personnel carriers.
