Two soldiers who were participating in a training exercise were killed in a diving accident in the Maine River in Angers last night. They were aged 24 and 30. One of the victims was from a regiment in Occitanie.
The diving exercise was organized in the middle of the night. Two soldiers were killed in Angers (Maine-et-Loire) in the Maine River on Monday night to Tuesday. They were aged 24 and 30. Corporal-Chef Axel Deplanque was assigned to the 6th Engineer Regiment of Angers and Sergeant Bin Chen to the 1st Foreign Engineer Regiment of Laudun (Gard), according to Le Courrier de l’Ouest.
Coincidentally, they may have been trapped in the cavity of a bridge pier?
“It was an inter-arm exercise that was supposed to last 4 hours. At some point, the connection was lost,” explained the prosecutor of Angers, Eric Bouillard. The two divers may have been trapped in the cavity of a pier of the Basse-Chaîne bridge that crosses the river, according to our colleagues.
When the rescue arrived at 3:30 in the morning, the two soldiers were in cardio-respiratory arrest. Their deaths were confirmed at the Angers University Hospital. The exercise had started at 11 p.m.
The diving training had started in Saint-Mandrier (Var) for the sea part and continued in Angers for the freshwater part, according to a source in the Army. The two training modules were supposed to last 10 hours.
The Angers prosecutor’s office handed over the investigation to the Rennes prosecutor’s office, which has military jurisdiction. The investigation was entrusted to the gendarmerie research brigade in Angers.
The Ministry of Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs issued a press release in which it did not comment on the circumstances, but specified that General Schill, Chief of Staff of the Army, shares in the grief of the families, friends, and brothers in arms of the two victims.
