A Romanian F-16 fighter jet shot down a drone over eastern Romania on Friday after the unmanned aircraft was detected approaching the country’s airspace, according to the Romanian Ministry of Defence.

President Nicușor Dan said the incident took place at around 11 a.m. and that an investigation had been launched.

“The area was uninhabited, so the pilot was able to fire without any risk,” Dan wrote in a post on X.

The Ministry of Defence said the F-16, operating from the 86th Air Base at Fetești, engaged the drone with an air-to-air missile during an air policing mission.

The drone was intercepted over an unpopulated area near Padina, northeast of Bucharest. According to the ministry, radars first detected the unmanned aerial vehicle at about 9:40 a.m. over the Black Sea.

The aircraft then moved west towards the port town of Sulina before continuing in the direction of Buzău, the ministry said.

Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to monitor the situation, while two Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft operating from Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base were also sent to the area.

The incident adds to a series of recent drone-related events that have raised security concerns in Romania, a NATO and European Union member bordering Ukraine.

In May, a Russian drone carrying explosives crashed in the city of Galați, causing a fire on the roof of a residential apartment building and injuring two people.

A month later, a Ukrainian sea drone exploded in the Romanian port of Constanța. The Ukrainian navy said the vessel had been pushed off course by Russian electronic warfare interference.

The repeated incidents have increased concern among European officials about the spillover risks from Russia’s war against Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen previously described such incidents as a direct consequence of the conflict.

Romania has strengthened its air surveillance and defence measures since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The country’s location along the Black Sea and close to the war zone has made it particularly vulnerable to airspace incidents and unmanned aircraft activity.

Authorities have not yet publicly identified the origin of the drone shot down on Friday. The investigation is expected to examine its flight path, type and possible purpose as officials assess the circumstances surrounding the incursion.

The deaths of two resident doctors in Algeria within days of each other have renewed calls for urgent changes to working conditions in the country’s public hospitals, where medical unions say chronic staff shortages, long shifts and inadequate resources are placing healthcare workers under severe pressure.

Dr Aymen Badis, a resident neurosurgeon at Frantz Fanon Hospital in Blida, died of a heart attack after completing a 24-hour on-call shift. Days later, a resident anaesthesiologist died while working at Mohamed Lamine Debaghine University Hospital in Algiers.

Colleagues linked the second death to exhaustion and intense working conditions in social media posts. Algeria’s Health Ministry denied that the doctor had been working an overnight shift when she died, but the statement drew criticism from medical professionals who said it failed to address the wider pressure facing hospital staff.

The National Union of General Public Health Practitioners called for a comprehensive review of the on-call system, saying years of policies had contributed to exhaustion among doctors and nurses.

The union said the death of Dr Badis after what it described as an exhausting shift required an immediate response. It also urged authorities to revise the rules governing on-call duties, increase allowances and introduce a legal limit on shift lengths.

The latest deaths have added to a long-running dispute between Algeria’s medical community and the authorities. Doctors have reported working as many as 10 on-call shifts a month in understaffed departments, although some say they are paid for only six.

Resident doctors, who carry much of the daily workload in public hospitals, have also raised concerns about salaries, low night-shift allowances, broken equipment and overcrowded emergency departments.

Medical workers have been demanding changes to an executive decree introduced in 2013 that regulates on-call duties. The National Union of Public Health Practitioners has also called for a minimum monthly salary of 140,000 Algerian dinars for doctors.

The crisis is intensified by regional disparities. Specialist doctors and advanced medical facilities are concentrated in major cities, while inland provinces face shortages of both medical staff and equipment. Hospitals can wait months for repairs to MRI scanners and X-ray machines because procurement procedures delay the purchase of replacement parts.

Algeria has also faced a growing loss of medical professionals to emigration. French Medical Council figures showed that Algerian-trained doctors accounted for 38.8 per cent of non-EU-qualified doctors registered in France as of January 2025.

Doctors say the decision to leave is driven not only by pay but also by limited career opportunities, overcrowded hospitals and concerns over assaults against medical staff.

The deaths have placed renewed pressure on authorities to address working conditions and prevent the country’s public health system from losing more doctors to exhaustion and emigration.