Source: Africa Publicity
US President, Donald Trump, announced on Tuesday that US pilots involved in an incident near the Strait of Hormuz were safe.
According to him, the US will release an official report on the incident.
Speaking to reporters while traveling to the White House, President Trump says “The pilots are fine… We are going to issue a report tomorrow, but the pilots are fine.”
Trump was speaking after reports that a US Army Apache helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway on Monday.
A report by The New York Times, which cited two people briefed on the incident, revealed that the helicopter’s two crew members were safely rescued.
The exact cause of the crash remains unclear. One of the people briefed on the matter said the aircraft may have been shot down by Iranian fire, suffered a mechanical failure, or encountered another unidentified problem.
The incident unfolded amid heightened tensions in the Middle East following days of escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran. The two sides had exchanged strikes before signals of de-escalation emerged.
Trump disclosed that he had a “very good conversation” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defended Israel’s response to Iranian attacks.
“We had a very good conversation and he was hit and he hit back. And I can’t blame him for that,” Trump said. “They were going back and forth and now they both agreed, through me, to stop.”
The US president also suggested that diplomacy with Iran was making progress and argued that a negotiated agreement would be preferable to further military action.
“If we go and bomb, which we can do very easily if we want, and we spend another two or three weeks bombing, they’ll have nothing left whatsoever,” Trump says.
The Trump administration had not publicly disclosed the helicopter incident before The New York Times contacted the White House for comment, according to the report.
