Hope fades after 9 days of searching for Argentine sub

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Families of the 44 crew members of a missing Argentine submarine gave up hope and went home Friday after days of waiting at the sub’s Mar del Plata naval base, saddened and angered by evidence that the vessel may have exploded.

The submarine went missing nine days ago with only a one-week supply of oxygen onboard.

President Mauricio Macri said the search would continue and that he expected the submarine to be located in the days ahead. He called for a “serious and deep” investigation into the incident once the search operation was complete.

“This means understanding how a submarine that had received midlife maintenance and was in perfect condition to navigate apparently suffered this explosion,” he said at a news conference.

On Friday evening, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said improving weather would allow for boats with underwater detection capabilities to conduct a search. They will scan an area around where a sound thought to be an explosion was detected on the morning of November 15, the day the vessel sent its last signal.

“The weather, thank God, is favorable in that search area for scanning and mapping the seabed,” Balbi said at a news conference.

Concerns about the crew’s fate have set off a fierce political debate in a society sharply divided between supporters of Macri and his free-market policies and opposition Peronists.

Crew families have expressed outrage at the level of funding and maintenance of the armed forces, whose budget has gradually declined since the fall of a military dictatorship in the 1980s.