Lithuania announced on Monday that search teams have recovered the armored vehicle of the four missing American soldiers, which sank last week in a swamp in a military training area.
The Lithuanian military police and American investigators are still working on-site. „We will remain patient and focused as they gather more information about the situation,” the Ministry of Defense transmitted on X, according to Reuters.
The Ministry did not mention whether the missing soldiers have been found.
An extensive search and rescue operation was launched on Tuesday after the disappearance of four American soldiers and the armored vehicle they were in during a military exercise in eastern Lithuania. Their vehicle sank in a swamp, but it is not yet known if the soldiers were inside.
The vehicle was discovered the next day, buried under a thick layer of mud and water, at a depth of over five meters.
The soldiers, who are part of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart in the U.S. state of Georgia, went missing while on a training mission to recover another U.S. Army vehicle.
The incident took place in a training area near Pabradė, a town in eastern Lithuania, near the border with Belarus.
The time-sensitive rescue operations involve hundreds of soldiers and heavy equipment to extract the vehicle from the swampy terrain.
Over the past week, rescue teams have worked to remove water and mud using various drainage, digging, and dredging techniques. The military stated that the process has been slow and challenging due to "groundwater infiltrations." The terrain could not support the heavy equipment needed to extract the vehicle.
The recovery efforts have been complicated by the muddy swamp and the massive weight of the 70-ton armored vehicle M88 Hercules, as reported by NPR.
Over 200 personnel have been involved in the recovery operation, including American and Lithuanian soldiers, as well as 55 engineers from the Polish armed forces, according to the U.S. Army.
A team of U.S. Navy divers arrived on site and conducted an initial dive into the swamp on Saturday but failed to reach the vehicle due to the large amount of mud. On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that the dive team successfully attached a special rope to the buried vehicle to pull it out of the mud.
The families of the four missing soldiers have been informed about the status of the operation, and the U.S. Army stated that they are being kept updated on the search efforts.
"This tragic situation weighs heavily on all of us. We want everyone to know that we will not stop until our soldiers are found," declared Major General Curtis Taylor, the commanding general of the 1st Armored Division, last week in a statement.