ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 19 Feb) – The U.S. military on Monday said it is investigating the death of an American soldier participating in joint anti-terror training in Jolo island, about 950 km south of Manila.
U.S. military officials did not identify the soldier, but later released his name as Cpl. Timothy Lewis. He suffered a heat stroke and eventually died from cardiac arrest on Thursday.
It was the first reported death of a U.S. soldier participating in this year’s joint military drill.
“At approximately 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 15, a U.S. service member died at Camp Bautista after going into cardiac arrest. The service member had been initially treated at another location on Jolo island before being transported to Camp Bautista.”
"Medical personnel provided advanced cardiac life support measures before the servicemember was pronounced dead. An investigation of the death is being conducted, and more information will be released as it becomes available."
"We want to emphasize that this death was in no way related to combat," U.S. Air Force Major John Redfield, spokesman of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, told the Mindanao Examiner.
The soldier was part of a contingent from the Okinawa-based 3rd Marine Expeditionary Forces.
In February 2002, a U.S. MH-47 Chinook helicopter with eight American crew and two soldiers on board crashed during a night flight in the Bohol Strait in central Philippines. There were no survivors.
The American troops were taking part in an anti-terror exercise with Filipino soldiers. The helicopter was on a routine transit from the southern island of Basilan to the island of Mactan where the U.S. maintains a logistics air base.
Eight months later, a U.S. soldier was also killed after an Abu Sayyaf bomb exploded on a roadside restaurant outside a Philippine Army base in Malagutay village in Zamboanga City.
Thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops began a three-week joint military drills, dubbed as Balikatan 2007, aimed at enhancing combat capabilities of soldiers. And this would be followed with similar anti-terror trainings in Tawi-Tawi island near the Sabah border and continued in central Mindanao island.
Filipino troops are battling Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya militants on Jolo island, about 950 km south of Manila.
The Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya groups are blamed for the string of bombings in the Philippines and Indonesia that had already killed scores of people the past years.
U.S. and Philippine troops would also embark on humanitarian missions, that included infrastructure projects and medical outreach in poor Muslim areas in during the exercises. (Mindanao Examiner)
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