Romanian authorities said on Monday they were evacuating a village near the Ukrainian border, after a Russian drone attack in southern Ukraine set fire to a ship carrying liquefied petroleum gas.
Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian ports in the Danube region, triggering alerts in neighbouring Romania.
Following a nightly drone attack on a Danube river port in southern Ukraine, a ship carrying LPG had caught fire, Romanian authorities said Monday.
Due to the ship’s “proximity to Romanian territory and the nature of its cargo”, authorities ordered the evacuation of the village of Plauru, situated across the Danube from the Ukrainian port city of Izmail.
The ongoing evacuation was a “precautionary measure”, the emergency services said in a press release.
Prior to the evacuation, residents received alerts on their mobile phones, warning them of possible objects falling to the ground after the attack.
“Today… a RO-ALERT message was issued for the Plauru area due to the imminent danger of explosion,” authorities said, adding that road and naval traffic in the area had been halted.
According to Romania’s defence ministry, “no unauthorised incursions into national airspace were detected” after “Russian Federation forces attacked areas of Ukraine near the river border with Romania” overnight.
Officially, Plauru had 32 inhabitants in 2021. Authorities said they have evacuated 15 people so far.
On Friday, the Romanian foreign ministry announced the summoning of the Russian ambassador after drone fragments had crashed on the NATO country’s soil during the night between November 10-11.
“He was presented with tangible, extensive and solid evidence of the violation of Romania’s airspace by an unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to the Russian military forces,” it stated in a press release.
The Russian embassy in Bucharest called the summoning “a theatrical event” in a message posted on Telegram, refuting “any speculation about an alleged intentional violation of Romania’s territorial integrity and any threats to its security from Russia”.
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