A ship carrying 4,190 South Korean and Japanese cars sank after colliding with an oil tanker south of Singapore, port officials and a ship operator said yesterday.
The collision between the oil tanker Mt Kaminesan loaded with 279,949 tonnes of crude oil and car carrier MV Hyundai No 105 occurred on Saturday just before midnight, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said in a statement.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"All the cars sank. But there is no spill [of crude oil] from the tanker," said MPA spokeswoman Theresa Pong.
The MV Hyundai was carrying about 3,000 new cars exported by South Korea's largest automaker, Hyundai Motor Co, and its Kia Motors affiliate as well as over 1,000 second-hand Japanese cars, the ship operator, Eukor Car Carriers, said.
The MV Hyundai's crew of 20 -- four Koreans and 16 Filipinos -- were rescued before the ship sank and there were no injuries to members of either vessel, the authority said.
"Prior to the collision, warnings were given to the two vessels by the MPA's vessel traffic information service. The two vessels also communicated with each other," the statement said.
The Korean automakers and the Eukor Car Carriers, which chartered the sunken ship from Panama, said they had no financial damages from the accident.
"The exported cars have been paid already and they are insured for accident," said Jake Jang, a Hyundai Motor spokesman.
The 184m-long and 31m-wide ship, which was built in 1987, was bound for Germany, carrying such models as the small-sized passenger car Click, sports utility vehicles, Santa Fe and Sorento, for exports to Russia, Finland, Germany and other European countries, Jang said.
Hyundai has stockpiles of those cars, if European dealerships want them to be shipped again, he added.
Carl Hagman, the chief executive of the Eukor Car Carriers, which is operating 83 vessels, said the doomed ship was insured with Norwegian Hull Club, and damages would be fully compensated.
The MV Hyundai vessel was taken over by the Eukor Car Carriers in 2002 from Hyundai Merchant Marine Co.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS