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Norwegian Divers Reach Sunken Russian Sub, Check Flooding
Norwegian divers have descended to the sunken Russian nuclear submarine "Kursk" and are tapping along the hull to establish which compartments have been flooded, Russian media reported Sunday.
All previous efforts to rescue the 118 crew aboard the vessel have failed and Russian officials said Saturday that most of the submariners probably died minutes after the Kursk went down to the Barents Sea floor on August 12. Any survivors may already be dead by now.
"Most possibly, we will have to admit that our worst expectations have materialized," Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, chief of the Northern Fleet, told a special program on RTR television Saturday in the starkest statement so far.
According to Russian reports, the divers would try to manually unscrew a lid leading to the sub's escape chamber. Pressure-measuring devices located inside the hatch would give the rescue team an idea about conditions inside the Kursk.
Pressure within the vessel must be low enough to provide for survival. The divers would also assess chances for the British mini-submarine to latch on to the damaged escape hatch.
There is still no final word on what caused the accident, but Motsak, the 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.
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