M A I N   N E W S

Body sighted on Russian sub
All crew members declared dead

MOSCOW, Aug 21 (DPA) — Nine days after the tragic loss of the nuclear submarine Kursk during exercises in the Barents Sea, the Russian navy officially confirmed today the deaths of its 118 crewmen after divers found the wreck to be completely waterlogged.

“All compartments of the submarine Kursk are flooded, and no member of the crew have survived,” the Chief of the Northern Fleet Staff, Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, said in a statement.

The Kursk sank on Saturday, August 12, in 108 metres of water off the northern Russian port of Murmansk after it was holed in what was suspected to have been a collision with another submarine.

Although Russian authorities presumed seven days later that the crew had all perished, it was this final brief announcement that ended an agonizing waiting ordeal for the relatives, who learned only last today that the submarine was stranded on the seabed.

Only Monday, a week later, did Norwegian and British divers assisting Russia relinquish last hopes after hammering in vain on the hull in search of large air pockets and opening the hatch into the rear crew compartment, which proved to be full of seawater and sand.

A Russian RTR state television crew on the scene reported that the first body was sighted in the compartment, the last of nine sections running 155-metres to the submarine’s shattered bow.

After examining external damage to the 18,000-ton vessel, a government commission concluded the crippled submarine was internally devastated by exploding torpedoes when it hit the seabed.