2 sailors rescued, 25 missing as vessel sinks off China coast
Tags:
Two Vietnamese sailors were rescued on Friday more than 20 hours after their vessel sank in the South China Sea, but 25 others are still missing.
The Vietnamese cargo ship, the "Phu Tan", capsized and sank on Thursday in strong gales about 110 nautical miles west of Sanya city on China's southern island province of Hainan, according to the South China Sea salvage bureau.
The bureau immediately dispatched a rescue vessel to search for the missing after it received two emergency calls from the Vietnamese maritime department on Thursday, spokesman of the bureau said.
The rescue vessel, "South China Sea R 111", arrived at the site in strong gales of 75.6 to 100 km per hour and waves six metres high, but found no sign of survivors, official Xinhua news agency reported.
The vessel began searching a larger sea area in the direction in which survivors would have drifted. At around 8.40 am on Friday rescuers found two Vietnamese sailors in waters of the Beibu Gulf, 27 nautical miles from the accident site.
The search for the 25 sailors who are still missing continues. According to the Vietnam news agency, the cargo ship was heading from Vietnam's central Danang city to the northern Haiphong city when it was hit by strong gales.
Earlier media reports said the "Phu Tan" was a fishing boat, but the agency said it was a cargo ship with a crew of 27.
Post new comment