WASHINGTON (CNN) — A search-and-rescue operation is underway for a U.S. sailor who went overboard from the Norfolk-based USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Persian gulf on Wednesday, according to a statement from the US Navy.
Four ships from the U.S., Spain and Pakistan are currently searching for the missing sailor.
“Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Leyte Gulf (CG 55), Spanish Álvaro de Bazán-class frigate Méndez Núñez (F 104) and Pakistan Navy Ship PSN Aslat (F265) are currently conducting search and rescue operations in the Arabian Sea following reports of a missing U.S. Navy Sailor.”
Statement from the US Navy 5th Fleet
The sailor’s name is being withheld in accordance with Navy policy.
The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group was deployed to the Middle East in May due to a “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran, US national security adviser John Bolton said at the time.
Prior to that deployment, the US Navy had been without an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf since early April, when the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group departed to head to the Mediterranean for exercises with the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, according to the US Naval Institute’s Fleet and Marine Tracker.
Also in the Lincoln strike group are the cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and the guided-missile destroyers USS Bainbridge, USS Mason and USS Nitze, according to a Navy release from early April, which also said a Spanish destroyer would be operating with the strike group for its entire deployment.