Rescuers to tow trapped sub
2005-08-05 21:57
Vladivostok - Russian naval rescuers have hooked a mini-submarine stranded with seven people far under the Pacific Ocean and are trying to tow it to safety, the commander of the Pacific Fleet said on Russian television on Saturday.
"We have hooked onto the whole system that our bathyscaph is in," Adm. Viktor Fyodorov told the NTV television channel by telephone from the Russian Far East.
Fyodorov had made a similar statement several hours earlier, which was disputed by other naval officials, but the latest appeared stronger.
Meanwhile, Britain's Royal Navy is to join efforts to free the crew by sending a remote control submersible to the scene, officials in London said on Friday.
The underwater vehicle - officially called Remotely Operated Vehicle Scorpio 45 - can operate at a depth of up to 925 metres and is fitted with three cameras and cutters that can slice through steel cables, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
Seven Russian sailors are thought to be on the mini-submarine, designed for use in rescue, research and intelligence-gathering missions, and which is trapped after part of a fishing net became entangled in its propeller.
The submarine has enough oxygen to last until Monday, the commander of Russia's Pacific fleet said on Friday.
Transport
A Royal Air Force C-17 transport plane was due to fly to Glasgow to collect the remote control device, and would head to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a port city in far eastern Russia, an MoD statement said.
It would then be loaded onto a Russian ship to go to the scene of the accident, off the Kamchatka peninsula.
"The Remotely Operated Vehicle is a world-class capability being offered by Britain as part of the international response to this ongoing incident," said Ian Riches, head of the MoD's submarine escape and rescue team.
"We all hope that by the time we get to the scene that the Russian sailors will have been rescued. But we are deploying so that the ROV can be in place as a contingency if required by the Russians."
Earlier on Friday, the US navy's Pacific Fleet said it was airlifting two remotely operated submersible vehicles to the site to help with rescue efforts, while Japan has also dispatched four military ships.
- AFP