Nearly 700 fishermen rescued from ice trap (VIDEO)

Russian rescue workers have successfully evacuated some 675 fishermen from an ice floe that broke away from the island of Sakhalin in the country’s Far East.

Emergency services say none of those rescued require medical assistance. Two helicopters and several vessels took part in the rescue operation.At about 12:00 pm local time, rescuers received information that a large ice floe had broken off the coast, taking several hundreds of people with it into the open sea. By the time the rescue operation started, the float was about a half a kilometer away from the island.