According to information, in the morning hours of Tuesday, a cargo ship of a foreign flag, which was ordered by the Hellenic SAR Situation Room to participate in a search and rescue operation which has been ongoing since yesterday, in the sea area of 3.8 nm south of Samos, located a corpse within the SAR responsibility area in Greek territorial waters and contrary to the regulations informed a Turkish Coast Guard vessel, which was sailing within Turkish territorial waters to retrieve it.
Afterwards, the Turkish offshore vessel, which was sailing in an adjacent area, entered the SAR area that is in the Greek Authorities’ responsibility and carried out dangerous maneuvers against the Hellenic Coast Guard patrol vessel. During the process of collecting the body and while the Hellenic Coast Guard patrol vessel approached the Turkish one in order to point out that it has violated Greek territorial waters, the Turks reacted, tried to cause damage to the Greek vessel, while at the same time it made a display of weapons.
It is pointed out that the aforementioned Turkish vessel did not provide any substantial assistance in the area for the search for missing persons at sea, nor did they inform the coordinator of the Hellenic SAR Situation Room of its presence.
It is noted that the movements of the Turkish vessel hampered the work of the Hellenic Coast Guard and the FRONTEX force, as well as the development of the search and rescue operation for missing persons.
This particular incident took place in the presence of an Italian vessel of the FRONTEX force, whose crew recorded the incident in order to inform the FRONTEX Organization of its own further actions.
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