Military to send USNS Comfort to Colombia amid refugee crisis

[nitpicker]

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/military-to-send-usns-comfort-to-colombia-amid-refugee-crisis-1.543210

Military to send USNS Comfort to Colombia amid refugee crisis

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 17, 2018


WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is preparing to dispatch a hospital ship to Colombia and possibly other parts of South America to help relieve strain on health care systems overloaded by an influx of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled that crisis-racked nation, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday. "It is absolutely a humanitarian mission," he told reporters returning with him to Washington after a six-day tour of South America.

Mattis would not say when the USNS Comfort would arrive off the coast of Colombia, but it apparently will not be in the next few weeks. Dana W. White, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said it would be "in the fall," but she would not be more specific.
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Some details of the plan for dispatching the Comfort from Norfolk, Virginia, have not yet been worked out, Mattis said. The ship may visit other South American countries also feeling effects of the refugee problem. "We are going to go where the need is greatest," he said, but that will not include Venezuela.
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