First Mistral warship arrived in Alexandria

Last updated: 2016/06/23 at 1:38 PM

By Ahmed Abbas 1 Min Read

The Mistral-class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) warship Gamal Abdel Nasser, which Egypt purchased from France, arrived Thursday in Alexandria after a 14-days journey, reported Egyptian state TV.

Egypt received two Mistral warships earlier this month from France in a ceremony attended by Egyptian Defense Minister Sedki Sobhi.

The Egyptian Navy commander Osama Rabea will attend a receiving ceremony for the warship, which participated in the French-Egyptian military training exercise Cleopatra.

It is the first warship of its kind to have a port in the Middle East and Africa.

The second Mistral warship, Anwar Sadat, will arrive in September after its crew is trained.

This came a few months after Egypt had announced a €5.2bn agreement to buy 24 French Rafale fighter jets in February 2015.

TAGGED: alexandria, Mistral

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By Ahmed Abbas

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Ahmed Abbas is a journalist at DNE’s politics section. He previously worked as Egypt based reporter for Correspondents.org, and interned as a broadcast journalist at Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin. Abbas is a fellow of Salzburg Academy of Media and Global Change. He holds a Master’s Degree of Journalism and New Media from Jordan Media Institute. He was awarded by the ICFJ for best public service reporting in 2013, and by the German foreign office for best feature in 2014.