Nato says search is ongoing amid confusion over missing US troops in Lithuania
Secretary-general Mark Rutte had previously suggested that the four missing soldiers were dead.
Nato has clarified comments that its secretary-general Mark Rutte made when he suggested that four US soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania had died.
“The search is ongoing,” Nato said in a statement posted on X on Wednesday. “We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”
The US army said the Hercules armoured vehicle the four US soldiers were in during a training exercise had been found submerged in a body of water. It said recovery efforts were under way by the US army and Lithuanian armed forces and civilian agencies.
The soldiers were conducting tactical training when they went missing.
Asked on Wednesday evening by reporters if he had been briefed about the missing soldiers, US President Donald Trump said: “No, I haven’t.”
During a trip to Warsaw, Mr Rutte told reporters that he had received word of the deaths of the four soldiers while he was delivering a lecture, and that his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.
“This is still early news so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones,” Mr Rutte said in Warsaw.
Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reported that the four US soldiers and their vehicle were reported missing on Tuesday afternoon during an exercise at the General Silvestras Zukauskas training ground in Pabrade.
The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all Nato members and have often had chilly ties with Russia, a key ally of Belarus, since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
Relations soured further over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has been one of the most outspoken supporters of Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
