Search continues for two missing U.S. soldiers off Morocco coast

Search teams kept combing Morocco’s southern coast for two missing U.S. Army soldiers after they disappeared near the Cap Draa Training Area close to Tan Tan, where cliffs rise above the Atlantic Ocean and the land turns from desert to sea.

U.S. Africa Command said the soldiers, who were taking part in African Lion 2026, were reported missing on May 2 near the training area and that U.S., Moroccan and other exercise assets had launched coordinated search and rescue operations. The effort included helicopters, ships, mountain rescue units and divers. The Moroccan military said the incident happened Saturday at about 9 p.m. near Cap Draa.

A U.S. defense official said the two soldiers were not actively training when they went missing. Their day’s exercises had ended, and they were out on a recreational hike when they were last seen near ocean cliffs in the vicinity of Cap Draa. The terrain there is rugged, with mountainous stretches, desert and semidesert plains pressed up against the Atlantic coast, a setting that has complicated the search.

African Lion 2026 began April 13 in Tunisia and is scheduled to run through early May across Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana and Senegal. AFRICOM says the exercise involves more than 5,600 personnel from more than 40 nations and describes it as its largest, premier annual exercise, designed to strengthen interoperability and readiness. The exercise has been held since 2004.

The disappearance has placed renewed attention on the risks that can follow service members even after training hours end, especially in remote areas where coordination between host nations and U.S. forces can determine how quickly rescue teams reach the scene. AFRICOM said the incident remained under investigation as the search continued.

The accident also recalls a deadly episode during a previous African Lion exercise in Morocco. In 2012, two U.S. Marines were killed and two others were injured when a helicopter crashed in Agadir, underscoring how quickly a multinational training event can turn into a recovery operation. With the two Army soldiers still missing, the focus has shifted from exercise readiness to the more urgent work of finding them and accounting for what happened on the coast near Tan Tan.