Sick Turkish sailor evacuated off Saudi Arabia

Cairo: Saudi border guards had evacuated a Turkish sailor for medical treatment, a Saudi official has said.

The sailor was aboard a tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag off the Saudi south-western region of Jizan Friday when he suffered a high temperature and showed a need for emergency medical evacuation, spokesman for the Saudi border guards Misfer Al Quraini added.

The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Jeddah (JMRCC), which received the distress call, located the site of the sailor’s ship at a waiting area in the Aramco port in Jizan and conveyed it to a command and control centre there.

The sailor, in his 30s, was evacuated to a maritime border guard base off the Red Sea before he was transferred to the Prince Mohammed Bin Nasser in Jizan amid preventive measures against the new coronavirus, the official said, according to the Saudi news agency SPA.

“His health is stable. The shipping agent has been notified to finalise all legal procedures with the relevant bodies,” Al Quraini said without giving further details.

Saudi-Turkish relations have recently been strained over Ankara’s meddling in Arab affairs and Turkey’s siding with Qatar in a bitter dispute between the small emirate and a Saudi-led Arab bloc.