A soldier has been missing since Sunday May 7 in Guyana, after accidentally falling from a canoe into the waters of the Oyapock River, on the border with Brazil, we learned on Monday May 8 from a door. -speech of the armed forces in Cayenne.
“While on a Sunday night mission on the Oyapock River, a military boatman accidentally fell into the water. He is currently missing. The search is still ongoing,” said the Armed Forces communications officer in French Guiana, in northeastern South America.
The facts occurred around 9 p.m. (2 a.m. in France) the prefecture said later on Monday, specifying that the disappeared, boatman in the 3rd foreign infantry regiment, is also customary chief of the Teko Amerindians from the village of Camopi. on the Oyapock River. Established in Kourou since 1973, the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment is the only unit of the Foreign Legion in the Antilles-Guyana zone.
The search will resume on Tuesday
The prefecture estimated that, according to the first elements, the boat hit a tree while operating at night in unfavorable weather.
Three divers have been dispatched to Camopi and two helicopters have been mobilized, she added, indicating that the search carried out on Monday proved fruitless and that it will resume on Tuesday.
A gendarme, on patrol aboard the same canoe with other soldiers, was slightly injured, the gendarmerie in Paris also indicated.
On March 25, a French gendarme, GIGN Major Arnaud Blanc, was killed while participating with nine comrades in an operation against illegal gold panning. A man suspected of belonging to a group of clandestine gold mine robbers involved in the death of this gendarme was subsequently arrested.
