Trump says missing US service member has been rescued in Iran
A US service member who has been missing since Iran shot down a fighter jet has been rescued, Donald Trump said.
In a post on Truth Social, the US President said the service member is injured but “will be just fine” and that the US had been monitoring his location.
It comes after a frantic search-and-rescue operation. The crew member had been missing since Friday, when Iran downed a US F-15E Strike Eagle. A second crew member was rescued earlier.
Mr Trump said the United States did not confirm the rescue of the first aviator from the F-15 fighter jet that was shot down in Iran on Friday “because we did not want to jeopardize our second rescue operation”.
In his social media post early on Sunday, Mr Trump said the second aviator “was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour”.
The war began with joint US-Israel strikes on February 28 and has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes and spiked fuel prices.
Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes.
The fighter jet was the first US aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the conflict in late February.
Mr Trump said last week that the US had “decimated” Iran and would finish the war “very fast”.
Two days later, Iran shot down two US military planes, showing the ongoing perils of the bombing campaign and the ability of a degraded Iranian military to continue to hit back.
The other jet to go down was a US A-10 attack aircraft. Neither the status of the crew nor exactly where it crashed was immediately known.
A frantic US search-and-rescue operation unfolded after the crash of the F-15E jet on Friday, focusing on a mountainous region in Iran’s southwestern province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad.
Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in the “enemy pilot”.
Iran’s joint military command on Saturday said that it also struck two US Black Hawk helicopters on Friday, but The Associated Press could not independently verify that.
Published: by Radio NewsHub