Romania issues air raid warning and scrambles F-16s due to two air targets

Romania issued an air raid warning in the county of Tulcea on the evening of 23 October and scrambled fighter jets over two air targets.

Source: Digi24, European Pravda reports

Details: Yesterday evening, residents of the Romanian county of Tulcea, located on the other side of the Danube opposite Ukrainian cities, received a warning about the possibility of debris falling near the border with Ukraine. Two people called the emergency services and asked what was happening. 

The Ministry of Defence later reported that at around 20:45, radar detected an air target near Chilia Veche, after which warnings were issued to residents and two Romanian F-16 fighter jets were deployed to monitor the situation. 

The unidentified target then continued to move towards the town of Tulcea, and disappeared from radar around 21:00, 12 km northeast of Tulcea (which is approximately 40 km from the border town of Chilia Veche). 

At 21:20, radar again detected a signal from an airborne target 2 km north-west of Lake Razelm. It was most likely not the same object that was flying from Chilia Veche to Tulcea. The target flew in the direction of Mihai Viteazu in Constanta County and then towards the town of Jurilovca in Tulcea County, where it disappeared from radar 9 km northwest of the settlement. It disappeared at approximately 21:40. 

The fighter pilots never visually saw the target. At 10:16, the all-clear was given and the fighter jets returned to base.

On Thursday, the military will inspect the areas where the targets displayed on radar could potentially have fallen.

Last Saturday, Romania scrambled its aircraft overnight due to a border violation by a "small airborne target" 19 km north of the major port of Constanta.

A similar incident occurred on the evening of 17 October. Then an unidentified target flew 14 kilometres inland and disappeared from radar near the village of Amzacea.

The wreckage of attack drones used by Russia to attack Ukrainian ports on the Danube has been found in the border area on the Romanian side of the river.

On 29 September, NATO boosted the surveillance of Romanian airspace by deploying another Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft.

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