Navy identifies sailor killed during Red Sea operation

Sara Mitchell, a 23-year-old Navy ensign, has been identified by Navy officials as the U.S. sailor who perished during American-led operations in the Red Sea.

Ensign Mitchell, who was assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer U.S.S. Jason Dunham, was fatally injured over the weekend while participating in a small boat operation in the Red Sea, Navy officials said in a statement late Monday night.

Crew members rushed Ensign Mitchell to a military medical facility on Aqaba, Jordan, where she was pronounced dead as a result of her injuries, officials from the Navy’s Fifth Fleet said in the statement. “No other sailors were injured and an investigation is ongoing,” fleet officials said.

Ensign Mitchell was not participating in a live combat operation at the time of the incident, and her death was the result of a “non-hostile action,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning told reporters Monday. He declined to provide details as to the objective of the small boat operation in which Ensign Mitchell died, or whether it was a training operation or a combat mission.

Ensign Mitchell is the second U.S. service member to die over the weekend.

On Sunday, the Pentagon identified Army Cpl. Joseph Maciel as the U.S. soldier killed during an insider attack against American forces in Southern Afghanistan on Saturday. Cpl. Maciel was killed and two other U.S. soldiers were wounded during the incident in Tarin Kowt District in the country’s Uruzgan Province.

All three men were attached to 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, which was supporting the Army’s inaugural 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, deployed to southern Afghanistan.

Col. Manning declined to comment on whether the soldiers were out on a mission with their Afghan counterparts during the attack, or whether the attack took place inside the U.S. compound in Tarin Kowt.