Helsinki A boat ferry with almost three hundred people on board ran aground on Sunday off the Åland Islands, located in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden. Rescuers have decided to evacuate passengers and crew from the vessel, the AP agency reported.
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The Finnish Coast Guard announced on Twitter that the ship Amorella, which serves the shipping line between the Finnish port of Turku and the Swedish capital Stockholm in the service of the Viking Line shipping company, is currently stranded in the shallows south of the port of Langnas in Åland. The guard was notified about an hour after noon.
They found 25 migrants on board the ferry in the Netherlands, apparently hiding in a cold room |
“No one was injured,” the shipping company said in a short statement. He described the situation with the ship, which has about two hundred passengers and 80 crew members on board, as “stable”.
According to Reuters, the ship is stranded on a wooded island between the picturesque Åland Islands. The Finnish authorities should confirm the completion of the evacuation. Video footage on social networks showed passengers in orange vests as helicopters circled over the ship.
Åland is an autonomous territory belonging to Finland. It lies about 70 kilometers from Stockholm. Amorella had a planned stop here.
The ship caught the attention of the media five years ago, when Finnish police detained eight Swedes on suspicion of mass raping a 45-year-old woman in her cabin on a ferry during a night cruise from Stockholm to Turku. These weekend cruises are popular with Scandinavians thanks to cheap tax-exempt alcohol.
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