As many as 71 citizens from Sudan, Syria and Somalia, including 20 children and 22 women,…
As many as 71 citizens from Sudan, Syria and Somalia, including 20 children and 22 women, adrift in the Aegean Sea on an inflatable boat and in danger of drowning, have been rescued by Romanian Border Police officers aboard patrol boat MIA 1104 of the Coast Guard, on a FRONTEX joint mission called POSEIDON 2017.
According to the Romanian General Border Police Inspectorate (IGPF), on October 28, the crew of the MAI 1104 boat, on a surveillance mission of the European Union’s external maritime border, under the POSEIDON 2017 operation, identified an inflatable motor boat overloaded with people adrift in the Aegean Sea.
After assessing the situation and considering the overload of the craft and the risk of sinking, the Romanian border guards started the rescue.
As many as 71 people — 20 children, 22 women and 29 men — claiming to have come from Sudan, Syria and Somalia, were moved over to the Coast Guard boat, according to IGPF.
The border guards offered assistance, food and water to the rescued people, and few hours later they were safely disembarked in the port of Chios and handed over to Greek authorities for specific procedures — medical assistance, identification, registration, fingerprinting.
Since the beginning of the year, the Romanian border guards have rescued, individually and in cooperation with the crews of the other boats deployed by the member states in Greece, in the joint operation POSEIDON 2017, more than 1,300 people in distress in small boats sailing in the Greek territorial waters.
Source:agerpres (Romanian national news agency)
