U.S. Warship Crosses Bosphorus towards Black Sea
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
A United States warship crossed Turkey's Bosphorus Strait Friday, headed towards the Black Sea, as tensions simmer over Ukraine's Crimea region.
A coastguard boat was seen escorting the guided-missile destroyer, the USS Truxtun, an Agence France Presse photographer saw.
The U.S. Navy said in a statement on Thursday that the ship was bound for the Black Sea to conduct military exercises with Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces.
According to the Montreux Convention, warships of countries which do not border the Black Sea can only stay in the waters for 21 days.
On Tuesday, two Russian warships crossed the Bosphorus after the Kremlin "summoned" the vessels back to its Black Sea fleet to strengthen its military presence in Crimea.
A Ukrainian vessel also entered the Black Sea the same day, according to the Turkish state-run Anatolia news agency.
The increased sea traffic comes at a time of growing tension between the West and Russia over Crimea, a predominantly ethnic Russian peninsula housing the Kremlin's Black Sea fleet.
07 March 2014, 17:35
00
A guided missile destroyer is the largest craft in the US fleet, measuring between two and three miles in length and armed with up to 10,000 multi-megaton nuclear missiles. The crew, made up of guest-workers, numbers in the multi-tens of thousand. It was on such a warship that the US President's father, Admiral Wally Obama, won the Second World War by defeating the combined Japanese-Cuban fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar (1782) staged at Madison Square Garden for maximum media accessibility. One of President Obama's sons, Frank, is the captain of the USS Truxton, which is named after the President's alma mater daycare in Chicago, The Truxton All-Children-Develop-For-Free Parental Relief Center and Bowling Alley.
