THE HAGUE: Five surfers died after getting into difficulty in “avalanche-like” sea foam caused by stormy conditions off a popular Dutch beach, police and witnesses said Tuesday.
Rescue workers retrieved the bodies after a major search following the incident on Monday at Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague that borders the North Sea.
Two victims were pulled from the sea late Monday but died despite efforts to resuscitate them. Three more bodies were discovered on Tuesday.
Two of the surfers were internationally-trained life guards and had worked in Australia, The Hague’s “alternative mayor” Pat Smith said.
“They were busy training. They then disappeared under the foam like it was some sort of avalanche,” he told Den Haag FM radio station.
Pictures from the scene showed rescue helicopters using their rotor blades to blow away a thick layer of sea foam near Scheveningen harbor entrance.
Several boats also combed the surf.
Drownings are rare along the Dutch coastline, but conditions can deteriorate rapidly during storms.
“The whole Dutch surfing community is in mourning today,” one local surfer, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
Five surfers die in Dutch beach tragedy
https://arab.news/4vbjk
Five surfers die in Dutch beach tragedy
- Two victims were pulled from the sea late Monday but died despite efforts to resuscitate them – three more bodies were discovered on Tuesday
- Pictures from the scene showed rescue helicopters using their rotor blades to blow away a thick layer of sea foam near Scheveningen harbor entrance
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
