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Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.

I'm Rebecca Kesb. We got him the message on social media from President Trump earlier,

announcing the safe recovery of the second airman shot down over Iran on Friday.

Mr Trump described the action as one of the most daring search and rescue operations in US history.

We'll look at how US forces managed to find an extract the serviceman in a moment.

First, though, retired US.S. Navy Admiral,

William Fallon gave us his reaction to the operation's apparent success. This is great news.

It shows the value of perseverance in these things. You just never give up. You keep trying.

It appears they must have had a pretty idea of where the individual was.

And so in typical circumstances, in a two-seat airplane, the two are not that far apart when you get on the ground.

I think the other thing that's probably played favorably into this is that the time of day.

So darkness is better for our people because they're used to operating at night.

It's typically an advantage to us because our people are equipped with night vision devices that

the other side probably doesn't have. Well, it seems that this complex rescue operation involves

hundreds of special forces personnel, several aircraft as well. We're told there was

direct contact between US and Iranian forces and there could have been some losses of US military

equipment. Iranian media saying that five people were killed, possibly Iranian as the US officials

not reporting any fatalities at this stage. But earlier, a spokesperson for

the Iranian army spoke on state-run TV.

Bismillah, Al-Gasem al-Jabbarin, ameliata to establishments of America, the spokesmen, they're saying,

further investigations by experts at the scene showed that two C-130 military aircraft and two Blackhawk helicopters of the US Army were destroyed.

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