By SPA,
Helsinki, Finland : More than 1,000 soldiers from 25 NATO and partnership countries on Sunday battled imaginary flooding and storms, in the largest international exercise held in Finland.
The five-day drill is aimed at coordinating operations in a crisis between 15 NATO members and 10 Partnership for Peace allies. It included 130 civilian volunteers acting as victims and concerned relatives of people hit by a major storm and floods.
The aim is also to see what bureaucratic problems might arise in such situations, said exercise coordinator Pentti Partanen, from the Finnish Interior Ministry.
The drill comes during the 10th anniversary of the formation of the Euro-Atlantic crisis response unit and is the eighth such disaster exercise held by the group since 2000.
Neutral Finland, which joined NATO’s partnership program in 1994, has recently increased cooperation with the alliance and now also has soldiers in military operations under NATO command in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported.