Russian scientists were rescued Saturday from a floating Arctic research station where they had nearly been swallowed up by ice floes earlier in the week.
"The rescue operation is a success," Artur Chilingarov, a deputy parliament speaker and former polar explorer himself, who headed the effort, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
The 12 men were unharmed. They were later flown by helicopter to the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, some 700km from their drifting station, Russian rescue officials said.
The helicopter landed on Spitz-bergen shortly before 1530 GMT, Itar-Tass said, quoting a Russian rescue official.
The local Norwegian police head, Olav Tombre, said he had received no request for medical assistance.
The scientists would be home in time to celebrate today's International Women's Day -- an important holiday in Russia -- Chilingarov said.
The fate of the scientists has riveted Russia for days after reports that most of their floating station disappeared in a Hollywood-like scenario.
Most of the installations of Russia's North Pole-32 research station sank overnight Wednesday when the ice below it cracked, rose up swiftly in great walls and eventually disintegrated.
Chilingarov described the rescue effort as taking place under "exceptionally difficult" conditions.
Two dogs which were along on the scientific expedition were also saved, he said.
The North Pole-32 station, set up in April last year to study climate change, has traveled some 3,000km atop the ice floes since then and is currently some 700km from the North Pole in the Nansen Basin.
Station chief Vladimir Koshelyev earlier told Russian television that more than half of North Pole-32 was swallowed up by ice in only half an hour.
"All of a sudden ... a huge wall of ice appeared that kept growing and growing," he said.
"First it was three-meters high, then five, then seven and finally over 10 ... In the course of a half hour it practically swallowed up 90 percent of the station, leaving only two small houses."
For the three days since the sinking, the researchers had been huddling for shelter in the few remaining structures left on the ice while outside temperatures hovered around minus 30?C.
Two helicopters, an Mi-8 and the heavy Mi-26 cargo chopper, manned by Russian rescuers flew in at midday Saturday from Spitzbergen to the site.
The Mi-8 landed nearby and picked up the station's crew, while the heavier Mi-26 was due to pick up the station's equipment while hovering above the ice.
Yury Tsaturov, an official with Russia's Rosgidromet weather agency quoted by Interfax, warned earlier Saturday that weather conditions were "turning for the worse," after being reported as favorable -- with temperatures of minus 25?C and clear visibility.
To back up the air rescue, an atomic icebreaker Arktika was dispatched from its base in Murmansk on Friday and was expected to reach the site in five days.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
RSS