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Two ambushed soldiers officially called missing

Two soldiers who disappeared May 12 in an ambush south of Baghdad are still missing and the Defense Department has changed their status to “missing/captured.”

Until June 29, the infantrymen had been listed as “duty status whereabouts unknown,” a temporary designation used while more information about the circumstances surrounding a soldier’s disappearance can be gathered.

The ambush in which Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, and Pvt. Byron Fouty, 19, went missing also claimed the lives of seven of their fellow soldiers and one Iraqi interpreter.

Jimenez and Fouty are with 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

Six of the soldiers were killed at the scene and the body of a seventh soldier who had been missing since the attack was found May 23 in the Euphrates River.

On June 9, the Army reported that identification cards belonging to Jimenez and Fouty were found in an al-Qaida safe house in Samarra about 75 miles north of Baghdad, but no further information about the soldiers’ whereabouts have been reported.

Two other soldiers have been listed as missing/captured during operations in Iraq.

Spc. Ahmed K. Altaie, 41, was abducted by masked gunmen in a Baghdad neighborhood Oct. 23 when he left the fortified Green Zone to visit his Iraqi wife.

The soldier missing longest is Staff Sgt. Keith M. Maupin, 23, who disappeared April 9, 2004, in an ambush on his fuel convoy.

The Defense Department announced June 29 that the status of Jimenez and Fouty has been changed to “missing/captured.”

Here are DoD definitions for the status of soldiers whose wherabouts are unknown:

• DUSTWUN, or Duty status: whereabouts unknown: A temporary designation used when the reason for a member’s absence is uncertain and it is possible the member may be a casualty whose absence is involuntary, but there is not sufficient evidence to make a determination that the member’s status is missing or deceased.

• Missing/captured: A casualty status applicable to a person who is not at his or her duty location and is determined to have been seized as the result of action of an unfriendly military or paramilitary force in a foreign country.

• Prisoner of war: A detained person as defined in Articles 4 and 5 of the “Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949.” In particular, one who, while engaged in combat under orders of his or her government, is captured by an enemy’s armed forces.