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UK Rescuers Arrive, Sub Crew Survival Hope Dim
British rescuers arrived Saturday evening in the area where a Russian nuclear submarine with 118 crew went down a week ago, but Russian officials say chances are very slim now for the survival of those aboard the ill- fated Kursk.
The British rescuers arrived aboard the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Norwegian divers will reach the site later Saturday night.
All previous attempts by Russian rescuers failed.
Britain's LR-5 mini-submarine will take British and Russian rescuers shortly to the bottom of the Barents Sea where the cripple Kursk is lying.
The latest information from the site said the joint rescue operation will start at 01:30 a.m. Sunday Moscow time (2130 GMT Saturday) following the arrival of the Norwegian divers.
The Russian Northern Fleet command said Saturday he submarine's ninth compartment, which is connected to the emergency escape hatch, may be flooded.
That statement implies that there is virtually no chance to save any of the submariners aboard.
There is still no final word on what caused the accident, but Admiral Mikhail Motsak, chief of the Northern Fleet, said there were three possible versions.
The first is a powerful dynamic blow that may have occurred on collision with another object.
Motsak said three foreign submarines were spotted in the accident zone, which is an area under constant observation by foreign intelligence services.
He said the Kursk's collision detonated three or four torpedoes, resulting in a blast equivalent to 1-2 ton of TNT.
The second is an explosion inside the submarine with subsequent flooding of the sub's first and second compartments.
And the third possible cause is that the Kursk hit a World War II mine, the admiral said. The final suggestion should not be completely discarded since six such mines have been discovered in that part of the Barents Sea over the last few years, he added.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who heads a government commission probing the causes of the accident, said the crewmembers in the first, second and possibly several subsequent compartments of the submarine died instantly when the Kursk struck the seabed Saturday.
However, Klebanov said that there is still a chance that some sailors may still be alive in the eighth and ninth sections, but that this chance is more of a theoretical nature, Interfax reported.
As the nation and the world pray for the sailors aboard the Kursk, the relatives of the submariners are having an especially hard time. The government has allocated funds to help those that have arrived to the northern port city of Murmansk and other places near the accident site.
In one moving episode, the director of a train bound for Murmansk turned off the speakers of a carriage that housed the relatives of the Kursk crew -- to stop them from hearing radio broadcast of comments from military officials that the submariners' chance of survival was almost zero.
Across the country, donations are being collected for the relatives and religious ceremonies held to pray for the crew's safe return.
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