Two US Navy sailors who went missing off the coast of Somalia reportedly fell into the water while attempting to board a ship in the Gulf of Aden, according to officials cited by The Washington Post on Sunday.

According to the report, the incident took place on Thursday in the Gulf of Aden as the sailors were getting ready to board the ship in “challenging” sea conditions, and one of them slipped from a ladder.

The occurrence is unrelated to recent strikes on Yemen as part of the multinational Operation Prosperity Guardian against Yemen, or the recent seizure of a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, as per the newspaper’s information.

Saturday, the United States Central Command issued a statement indicating that two members of the US Navy are unaccounted for in the vicinity of the Somalia coast.

“On the evening of January 11, two US Navy Sailors were reported missing at sea while conducting operations off the coast of Somalia. Search and rescue operations are currently ongoing to locate the two sailors,” th
e statement said.

The concise statement provided no further details regarding the activities of the missing sailors, except mentioning that they were “forward-deployed” to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet area of operations, where they were engaged in “supporting a wide variety of missions.

Source: National News Agency – Lebanon