YANBU – Four people were hurt after a Saudi ship ‘Asir' caught fire 130 nautical miles off the coast of Yanbu, said media spokesman of the command of the border guards in Madinah region Colonel Suleiman Al-Mutairi on Sunday. The Air Base of Civil Defense in Makkah sent an evacuation aircraft to airlift the injured to a Yanbu hospital, Al-Mutairi said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). Two tugboats were sent in coordination with King Fahd Industrial Port in Yanbu to provide assistance and tow the ship. Al-Mutairi said that the command and control room received a communication from the Coordination Center of Search and Rescue Operations of the axis of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba about a distress signal from the Saudi ship ‘Asir' at 2.40 a.m. Later a supplementary communication from the center of coordination informed that the fire has been extinguished. – SG
