Rescuers dig for missing U.S. soldiers' vehicle in Lithuania

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Rescuers in Lithuania were digging on Thursday into a peat bog in a military training area to recover the vehicle of four U.S. soldiers missing for two days.

The soldiers in the M88 Hercules armoured recovery vehicle were on an exercise at the Pabrade training ground near the Belarus border where U.S. units have been rotating since 2019.

Their vehicle was located on Wednesday at more than 5 metres down and enough water had now been drained from the swamp to begin digging for it, Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene told reporters on Thursday morning after surveying the site.

Hundreds of Lithuanian and U.S. soldiers with dozens of vehicles were working at the site and surveying nearby woodland in hope of finding the soldiers. "To us, their soldiers are like our soldiers," said army head Raimundas Vaiksnoras said.

Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Kestutis Budrys told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington earlier this week that his country was ready to host more U.S. troops.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)