‘DOSTI’ trilateral coast guard exercise concludes

Coast Guards of India, Maldives and Sri Lanka have successfully completed a four-day trilateral Coast Guard exercise ‘Dosti-XII’ off the Maldives coast.

The Tri-Lateral Exercise was aimed at bolstering the friendship, improve mutual operational capability, and exercise interoperability and to put up cooperation between the Coast Guards of all the involved nations.

The Hindu cited a Coast Guard release as saying: "Two ships from Indian Coast Guard, Samar with Integral Helicopter, Rajdoot along with a Dornier aircraft, one ship from Sri Lankan Samudura and two ships from Maldives, Huravee and Shaheed Ali participated.

Overall five ships and two aircrafts took part in the exercise, including two Indian Coast Guard vessels ICGS Samar with Integral Helicopter, ICGS Rajdoot along with a Dornier aircraft; a Sri Lankan CG ship, SLNS Samudura and two from Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF), MCGS Huravee and Shaheed Ali.

The exercise involved practising missions including maritime search and rescue (M-SAR), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), marine pollution response (POLRES) and anti-piracy.

As part of the four-day exercise, involved personnel executed a range of activities such as classroom sessions, sports activities and adventure tour to bolster bonding between them.

The involved vessels were aimed at responding to actual emergencies of search and rescue, medical evacuation, anti-piracy and pollution control response at sea, in a bid to bolster the ability of each coast guard to deal with real emergencies in vast waters.