Tag Archives: Soldiers

Nine Soldiers identified in Fort Hood, Texas flooding tragedy

Undated photograph of the U.S. Army post at Fort Hood, Texas

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Nine U.S. soldiers are now known to have died when a troop carrier overturned this week during a training exercise at the U.S. Army base of Food Hood in Texas, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said on Saturday.

“Based on initial reports it was a troop carrier that overturned in a stream,” Carter told a news conference on the sidelines of a security conference in Singapore in reference to Thursday’s incident.

“An investigation is under way. As always, we’ll get to the bottom of this incident and others that occurred this week.”

Also on Thursday, a pilot from the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron was killed when his F/A-18 fighter crashed in Smyrna, Tennessee.

Marine Captain Jeff Kuss of Durango, Colorado, had taken off to start a practice ahead of a weekend air show when he went down about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the runway.

In Colorado the same day, a pilot with the Air Force’s Thunderbirds squadron was unhurt when his F-16 jet crashed in a field 5 miles (8 km) south of Peterson Air Force Base.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Ten Killed in Ukrainian Violence

Ten people are dead in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian rebels opened fire on government forces and buildings.

The attacks by the Russian proxies killed two Ukrainian soldiers and eight civilians.

“We really strongly condemn this escalation of fighting and we call all sides to cease it and to observe the ceasefire,” European Commission spokeswoman Catherine Ray told journalists in Brussels.

Ukrainian military officials say that pro-Russian forces are continually violating the cease-fire agreed to in the Minsk II accord.

“This war looks like a war of attrition,” Gen. Viktor Muzhenko, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s Russia’s intent to demoralize our forces, and using that mechanism they want to influence Ukraine’s military leadership as well as the state leadership.”

The United Nations says the conflict in Ukraine has killed over 6,000 people since April 2014.  At least 1.4 million people have been forced to leave their homes.