(Reuters) – A lightning strike killed one soldier and injured nine others taking part in a training exercise on Wednesday at a U.S. Army post in Georgia, base officials said.
Details were not immediately available, but the accident occurred at about 11 a.m. in a training area of Ford Gordon, located just outside Augusta, Georgia, about 140 miles (225 km) east of Atlanta, the state capital.
Fort Gordon is the home of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence, a training academy for electronic warfare and cyber defense.
A base spokesperson, Anne Bowman, said the deceased soldier and the nine others injured were all involved in field training at the time of the lightning strike, which according to local media coincided with severe thunderstorms that were sweeping the area at the time.
The severity and nature of the injuries were not immediately known, Bowman said.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)