More than 500 fishermen have been rescued after they got stranded on a giant ice floe that broke off the island of Sakhalin in eastern Siberia.
Footage of the incident showed groups of people using smaller pieces of ice as rafts and trying to row to the coast on them, as the ice floe with the fishermen slowly drifted further away from land.
About 60 more people were able to get back to the shore on their own last night, emergency officials said.
The rescue operation lasted for almost seven hours. According to some of the fishermen, by the time they had been rescued the rift between the ice floe and the coast was 200 metres wide.
It is the third time in a week that emergency services in the Sakhalin region had to rescue ice fishermen stuck on drifting glacial masses.
Last Wednesday, about 300 people were trapped on an ice floe, and a further 600 found themselves cut off on Sunday also.
Local authorities blamed the incidents on people ignoring safety warnings and going ice fishing despite the danger of being stranded.
