Four US Army soldiers were killed in Lithuania during training, NATO executive director Mark Latte said he was visiting Warsaw on Wednesday.
“As I was talking, news came up about the four American soldiers killed in the incident in Lithuania,” Latte told reporters, adding that he didn’t know the details.
Lithuanian forces on Wednesday said they were searching for four US troops and chasing vehicles that went missing Tuesday afternoon.
A statement from the US Army European and African Public Relations Bureau in Weesbaden, Germany said the soldiers were conducting planned tactical training at the time.
“Available scenes have been identified now and search and rescue operations are underway,” the Lithuanian military said in a statement.
He said that more information will be provided when new information becomes available.
Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reported that four U.S. troops and vehicles were missing Tuesday afternoon during practice at the training grounds of General Silveslas Kauska in Pabrado, a town less than 10 km (6 miles) from the border with Belarus.
The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all members of NATO and have often had chilly ties with Belarus’ important ally Russia since it declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
It’s even more sour about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausda, one of the Ukrainian supporters of Russia’s president, one of the Ukrainian supporters, was the army of Vladimir Putin’s army.
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