Rescuers arrive but trapped crew likely dead

11:00 AM

MURMANSK - British and Norwegian rescuers have teamed up at the site of Russia's Kursk submarine disaster, but it seems more likely they will find a mass grave rather than any survivors.

Russia has said the 118 crew members of the nuclear-powered Kursk, which plunged to the bottom of the frigid Barents Sea last weekend, were almost certainly dead.

But it has pledged to continue with rescue efforts.

Russia's RTR state television reported from the scene that a Norwegian vessel carrying deep sea divers, who will help the British hi-tech LR5 mini-submarine to dock with the Kursk, arrived at the sight at about 8 am this morning (NZT).

RTR said a first attempt to reach the Kursk, lying in 108 metres of water, would be made between 2-4 pm today.

The international effort is the last slim hope for any survivors after the Kursk plunged to the bottom of the sea on August 12.

It was damaged possibly by a collision and certainly by two explosions.

Russia agreed to accept foreign help last Wednesday.

But the rescue effort seemed likely to become an operation to recover bodies after a Russian naval officer made the announcement everyone feared: most of the crew were dead.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, heading a government inquiry commission, confirmed this later in bald terms.

"According to experts on the government commission, most of the crew died in the first two or three minutes after the accident.

"There is a chance for survivors in the last sections but this is mostly theoretical," Klebanov said.

The Norwegian divers were expected to descend to the Kursk and help the LR5 rescue submarine dock with the stricken vessel.

The ship with the divers and the Norwegian Normand Pioneer mother ship, which carried the LR5, were at anchor some 12 km from the Kursk site.

A rescue could be hampered if reports that the Kursk's escape hatch was damaged when the submarine hit the seabed prove true.

RTR also said deep currents in the area were still strong and had hindered Russian rescue efforts. It also said the weather might worsen.

The Russian confirmation that most of the crew were probably dead came eight days after the accident happened.

"Hard as it is to say this, we will most likely have to say that our worst expectations have come true," Mikhail Motsak, head of the Northern Fleet general staff, told RTR.

"Most likely the whole of the front section has been flooded and the staff in those sections died in the first minutes of the accident," Motsak said.

He said signals tapped by crewmen through the hull before they fell silent on Monday indicated water was leaking into the rear of the vessel, gradually depriving those who survived the explosions of oxygen and increasing the air pressure.

"In fact we have crossed the critical survival threshold which we set for the crew according to our guidelines. We've been crossing this threshold yesterday, today and maybe tomorrow," he said.

The rescue operation would continue "to the end", he added.

"It is the gravest disaster that I, as a sailor, have known in the history of the submarine fleet," Motsak said.

All Russian efforts to dock a rescue capsule with the Kursk failed, but the British team intended to pursue their mission.

"As far as we are concerned we are still very much involved in a rescue mission," a British Defence Ministry spokesman, navy Commander Mike Finney, said in London.

"While there is still hope that there is somebody alive on board the Kursk, then we are still involved in a rescue operation," Finney, a former nuclear submarine commander, told Sky television. "We certainly haven't given up hope."

The British team hoped to manoeuvre the LR5 onto the Kursk and form an airlock through which surviving crew could escape. Norwegian divers brought a "water bell" which could help the operation.

President Vladimir Putin, lambasted at home and abroad for inaction, met his premier, the head of the presidential administration and the heads of the so-called power ministries in the Kremlin to discuss the disaster.

A spokeswoman could not confirm or deny rumours that Putin would go to the Northern Fleet's base at Severomorsk to which the Kursk belongs.

- REUTERS

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