[Task and Purpose] An American military aircraft “went down” in the eastern Mediterranean Friday night, U.S. European Command announced Saturday afternoon.The unspecified aircraft was conducting a training flight the evening of Nov. 10 and “suffered a mishap and went down,” EUCOM reported.
It is not clear what service branch the personnel involved are a part of, nor where the aircraft was assigned to. EUCOM also did not provide any additional information regarding how many people were aboard the aircraft, how many injuries or fatalities occurred and if the incident happened over land or sea.
The incident is under investigation, per the military.
In addition to its bases in Europe, the U.S. military has the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike group was deployed there following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. A second carrier strike group, headed by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, was initially in the eastern Mediterranean Sea but passed through the Suez Canal to the Middle East.
“However, we can definitively say that the aircraft sortie was purely related to training and there are no indications of hostile activity,” EUCOM added.
| Update from the Times of Israel at 11:35 a.m. ET: |
Five American service members have been killed when a military aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean during a training exercise, the US European Command (EUCOM) says.
“During a routine air refueling mission as part of military training, a US military aircraft carrying five service members suffered a mishap and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. All five of the service members onboard the aircraft were killed,” EUCOM says in a statement on the November 10 accident.
