MAE invites Libyan Embassy to discuss incident leading to Romanian sailor's death

The head of the Consular Department within MAE [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], Bogdan Stanescu, on Tuesday stated that MAE invited the Libyan Embassy in Bucharest to discuss over the 'circumstances and all that happened' during the January 4th incident when a Romanian sailor died, following an attack on the ship he was on, by a fighter plane.

Photo credit: (c) Simion MECHNO / AGERPRES PHOTO

'Including today, our Embassy in Tripoli has addressed several requests to the Libyan Foreign Affairs Ministry. We are now waiting for an answer from this Ministry. At the same time, the Romanian MAE invited the Libyan Embassy in Bucharest to discuss the circumstances of the incident and all that has happened,' said Stanescu.

He specified all these in the context in which a journalist reminded that the Libyan Army seemed to have admitted that its fighters attacked the ship.

The high-ranked MAE official explained that, at this precise point, the ship is still anchored in the Libyan port Tobruk for minor repairs, following next to sail to Piraeus.

He added that, on Monday evening, the Romanian Embassy in Tripoli contacted twice the other Romanian national onboard of the ship and who is also the father of the dead sailor.

'When the ship will arrive in the Piraeus port, a consular team of the Romanian Embassy in Athens is prepared to go there and provide all the consular assistance that will be needed,' Bogdan Stanescu concluded.

A Romanian sailor and a Greek national were killed in Libya by a rocket launched from an unidentified fighter having caused an explosion on the board of the ship they were on, MAE informed asked by AGERPRES.

The incident occurred on Sunday, aboard a ship that was showing a Liberian flag, while it had...