‘Explosion’ dashes last hopes for missing sub

MAR DEL PLATA, ARGENTINA — An explosion apparently occurred near the last known position of an Argentine submarine, the navy confirmed yesterday, dashing last hopes of finding the vessel and its 44 crew members.

Relatives of the missing sailors reacted with grief and anger to the news after holding out hope since the sub was reported overdue at its Mar del Plata base on November 17, two days after the explosion.

"An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event consistent with an explosion," occurred shortly after the submarine's last communication, Navy Spokesman Captain Enrique Baldi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.

After days of false hopes, some of the relatives said the navy had retained information about the sub, and had lied to them over the past week.

"I feel cheated," said Itati Leguizamon, whose husband German Suarez was a sonar operator on the ARA San Juan.

"They did not tell us they died. But they tell us they are three thousand meters (9,800 feet) deep," added Leguizamon as other family members shouted angrily around her.

"They lied to us," said Leguizamon, a lawyer.

A sobbing Jessica Gopar, whose husband was an electrician aboard the San Juan, said "they just told us that the submarine exploded."

She spoke as she came out from the sub's base.

"He was the love of my life, engaged seven years before we got married," Gopar said of her husband, Fernando Santilli. "And how can I tell my son that he no longer has a father?"

Underwater sounds detected in the first days of the search by two Argentine search ships were determined to originate from a sea creature, not the vessel. Satellite signals were also determined to be false alarms.

The San Juan, a 34-yearold German-built diesel-electric submarine, had reported a battery problem on November 15 and said it was diverting to Mar del Plata, but did not send a distress signal, according to the navy.

Baldi admitted on Wednesday that the situation for the sub and its crew appeared to be worsening.

However, he refused to speculate at that point on the origin of what he initially described as a "hydroacoustic anomaly" detected in the ocean almost three hours after the sub's communication and 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of its last known position.

Baldi explained that information about the unusual noise only became available Wednesday after being relayed by the United States and "after all the information from all agencies reporting such hydro-acoustic events was reviewed."