AFRICOM says two US soldiers missing after hike near Morocco’s Cap Draa training area

# AFRICOM says two US soldiers missing after hike near Morocco’s Cap Draa training area

The United States Africa Command said on May 3, 2026 that two U.S. service members were missing in southwestern Morocco after taking part in multinational military exercises.

The AP report says the soldiers were U.S. Army personnel who disappeared while on a recreational hike after the day’s training had concluded. A U.S. defense official said they were not actively taking part in exercises at the time. Instead, they had been out hiking near the Cap Draa Training Area close to Tan Tan and the Atlantic Ocean.

AFRICOM said the U.S., Morocco and other participating countries had launched a search and rescue operation. The report says the incident was under investigation and that the search remained ongoing. Moroccan authorities said the disappearance happened around 9 p.m. local time on May 2.

The search operation was large and specialized. The AP said the team included helicopters, ships, mountain rescue units and divers. That detail suggests that the authorities quickly treated the case as a serious terrain and coastal rescue effort rather than a simple missing-person report.

The geography of the area helps explain why. The Cap Draa region is mountainous and sits between desert and semidesert plains near the Atlantic. A person who disappears there can be difficult to find quickly, especially when cliffs and shoreline are part of the landscape.

The soldiers had been taking part in African Lion, the annual multinational U.S.-led exercise that runs across several countries and is described in the report as the largest U.S. joint military exercise on the continent. The exercise involves more than 7,000 personnel from more than 30 nations, according to the AP.

That scale matters because it means the incident did not happen in an isolated unit. It occurred during a major international event intended to strengthen regional security cooperation and readiness. The disappearance therefore became both a safety concern and an operational problem for the exercise organizers.

The article also notes a grim precedent. In 2012, two U.S. Marines were killed and two others were injured in a helicopter crash in Morocco during African Lion. The comparison is not exact, but it shows that the exercise has not been free of tragedy in the past.

For the United States and Morocco, the immediate priority was the search. For the soldiers’ families and unit, the uncertainty was the hardest part. The AP report did not say how the men became separated from the group, and the evidence does not support any assumption beyond the fact that they failed to return from the hike.

By May 3, the story had become one of coordination: U.S. and Moroccan military personnel, along with other partners, were still searching for two missing soldiers in difficult terrain near the Atlantic coast.