Two Navy SEALs are missing off the coast of Somalia after one fell into the water during a nighttime boarding mission on Thursday, US officials told the Associated Press.
The pair were climbing aboard a vessel while on a mission in the Gulf of Aden when high waves knocked one into the sea.
The second SEAL jumped in after him as part of Navy SEAL protocol to help a comrade in danger, the report said, and they both vanished.
The US Central Command said in a statement Friday that a search-and-rescue mission was underway to find two sailors, though it did not specify that they were SEALs.
The Gulf of Aden has been a focal point of Navy activity in recent weeks. Still, officials told the AP and The Washington Post that the incident wasn’t related to the ongoing United States response to Houthi-led attacks on shipping in the Red Sea or to Iran seizing an oil tanker.
The two sailors were sent to search for suspected Iranian weaponry heading for the Houthis in Yemen. The details of the Navy SEALs’ mission and which vessel they were trying to board are still unclear, though it’s known that pirates roam the coast of Somalia hunting for cargo ships to hijack.
Just few weeks ago, the Indian Navy special forces successfully rescued a ship hijacked by Somali pirates in the North Arabian Sea on Thursday, in a daring operation that showcased its naval prowess and regional influence.
The ship, MV Lila Norfolk, was carrying 21 crew members, 15 of whom were Indian nationals, when it was seized by five to six armed pirates east of the Somali port town of Eyl. The crew members managed to send a distress signal to a UK marine agency, which alerted the Indian Navy.
The US forces were often working with other nations on counter-piracy missions in the area, which sometimes included boarding vessels to ensure they had proper credentials and weren’t transporting illicit goods.
The US Navy had often conducted such interdiction missions to intercept weapons on ships heading for Houthi-controlled Yemen.
Centcom said the two sailors were “forward-deployed to the US 5th Fleet (C5F) area of operations supporting a wide variety of missions.”
The National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday that the search was “still ongoing” and that the vessel had been involved in a “normal interdiction” operation to try to disrupt the flow of weapon supplies to Yemen.
“It’s not related to the strikes that we took against the Houthis,” he said.
A few days ago, Al Shabaab militants captured a United Nations helicopter carrying two Somali men and several foreigners when it made an emergency landing in an area controlled by the Islamist group, a military official said on Wednesday.
The aircraft encountered a defect shortly after taking off from Beledweyne city in central Somalia, before it landed near Hindhere village, bordering Galguduud region.