KEEN footballer and Blackburn Rovers fan Andrew Stubbens, of Rishton, is among hundreds of servicemen recently deployed to the Balkans during the Kosovo crisis.

A former pupil of St Augustine's RC High School in Whalley, Andrew, 22, is an operator mechanic aboard the Royal Navy ship HMS Invincible and previously served on HMS York.

The ship was deployed to the Gulf region in January, anchoring briefly in Cyprus before travelling through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman before entering the Persian Gulf .

Invincible joined existing allied forces to enforce the Southern No Fly Zone over Iraq and help enforce UN sanctions on trade with Iraq.

It was redeployed to work alongside the USS Theodore Roosevelt conducting flying operations over the former Yugoslavian Republic earlier this month.

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