France Telecom-Orange has suffered a major incident on its cable-ship, the Chamarel. A fire broke out on the ship late afternoon on 8 August while returning from a repair operation on the Sat3-Safe cable off the coast of Namibia in the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite the crew's efforts to control the fire, the decision was made to abandon the ship at around 8pm local time. All 56 crew members were safely recovered by a Namibian fishing vessel without injury or incident.

The crew is currently located at the Namibian port, Walvis Bay and will be repatriated in the coming days.