Fourth American soldier is found dead in Lithuania

The body of a fourth soldier of the American army was found on Tuesday in Lithuania, a week after the soldier and three others were missing when the armored vehicle they were driving in a peat bog, said the US military.

The army did not immediately release the name of the fourth soldier, whose body was found one day after the other three soldiers were found dead following a vast international research effort which involved hundreds of Lithuania, United States, Poland and Estonia staff.

The four American soldiers, from the 1st armored brigade combat team, 3rd infantry division, were missing at the beginning of March 25, when they did not return from a training mission in an M88A2 Hercules, a 70 -ton vehicle which is essentially a giant military tow truck.

They had been sent to extract another army vehicle, said the army. But the soldiers may have left the road and in a deep bog, and they seemed to have been trapped inside while the vehicle was flowing, according to an army official in Europe. The US military investigates the cause of the accident.

The rescuers located the vehicle on March 26, but extracting it from the mud proved to be an intimidating engineering challenge. Heavy equipment has been brought to flirt with the peat bog, and divers, dogs and drones – including a radar penetrating on the ground – have been deployed in the recovery effort.