IFP - Four vessels with 16 crew members that had illegally entered the Iranian waters have been apprehended and handed over to officials. 



General Abdollah Nazarpour, a local border commander, says Iranian coastguards have intercepted four suspected fishing boats in the country’s territorial waters off the southern province of Khuzestan.

“The four illegal vessels were seized in the waters in the north of the Persian Gulf near Abadan, and their 16 crew members were arrested,” he said on Saturday.

“Yesterday [Friday], [coast] guards with the Abadan flotilla who were patrolling Iran’s territorial waters grew suspicious of four fishing vessels and intercepted them for further investigation,” he said, a Farsi report by IRNA said.

According to the investigations, he said, the four vessels belong to a foreign country and had entered Iranian waters without legal permission.

“They were stopped by the coastguards of Abadan, and their 16 crew members were arrested as border trespassers and handed over to legal authorities,” he noted.