Sailors feared dead after tanker collision

TEHRAN: A burning Iranian tanker listing for days off the coast of China after a collision with another vessel sank yesterday, with an Iranian official saying there was “no hope” of survival for 29 missing sailors.

Iranian state television reported that the Sanchi had sunk yesterday, days after its collision in the East China Sea. State TV quoted Mahmoud Rastad, the chief of Iran’s maritime agency, as saying: “There is no hope of finding survivors among the (missing) 29 members of the crew.”

Chinese officials could not be reached for comment yesterday, though the state-run broadcaster CGTN reported that the Sanchi had sunk. CGTN also said the ship’s voice data recorder, which functions like “black boxes” on aircraft, had been recovered.

The cause of the collision, 257km off the coast of Shanghai, remains unclear.

Three bodies have been recovered from the sea, leaving 29 crew members still unaccounted for. The crew was all Iranian except for two Bangladeshis.

The Chinese freighter CF Crystal, which collided with the Panamanian-registered tanker, had 21 crew members, all of whom were reported safe.

Television footage on Saturday showed parts of the Sanchi still aflame, its hull and superstructure completely stripped of paint.

Thirteen ships, including one from South Korea and two from Japan, were engaged in the rescue and clean-up effort, spraying foam in an effort to extinguish the fire.

The tanker was carrying a cargo of nearly one million barrels of condensate, a type of gassy, ultra-light oil that readily evaporates or burns off in a fire, reducing the chance of a major oil spill. – AP