The air raid sirens for missile attack were recently triggered at the military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta and two other Romanian officials were attending the ceremony marking the start of the pullout of Romanian troops from Afghanistan. Ponta and the Romanian Defense and Interior ministers were safely evacuated and sheltered in a bunker, reports local Mediafax.

No one was injured and the alarm was partially lifted after some 20 minutes, and the Romanian Prime Minister resumed his visit.

“From what I understood from our soldiers, this was not a special incident, but I am sorry I didn’t manage to sit down longer with our troops. A minor incident that gave some color to the event,” Ponta said after the incident, Mediafax reports.

“As long as I saw Romanian soldiers around me, I wasn’t worried at all. To be honest, when the alarm went off, I thought it was some kind of a joke or an exercise. But, when I saw the commanders applying the procedure, I realized this is no joke and I was nothing but disciplined,” he added.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Victor Ponta's facebook page)