(AFP) – US Vice President JD Vance on Monday attended the dignified transfer ceremony for the seventh soldier killed in the Middle East war. US Army Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, died March 8 from injuries sustained in a March 1 strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Pennington’s hometown was Glendale, Kentucky, and he was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade out of Fort Carson, CO.
Vance, who declined to answer questions from the press, was joined by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, at Dover Air Force Base in the eastern state of Delaware. During the ceremony, uniformed soldiers silently carried a flag-draped coffin from a C-17 aircraft to a transfer vehicle while Vance, Hegseth, and Caine saluted. Six other fallen soldiers — five men and one woman — have been returned to US soil.
The United States began a massive campaign of strikes on Iran alongside Israel on February 28. Tehran has responded with waves of missiles and drones targeting countries in the region that host US military personnel or bases.
“It is a profound reminder of the cost of war,” Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, told CNN after the silent ceremony. “I want to prevent other service members from dying,” Baldwin added. “I want to stop the waste of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and I think the way we do that is by demanding that these administration officials come to Congress, in public, answer questions — because that matters.”
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