Rescuers yesterday continued searching for the five Russian crew members of a Cambodian-registered cargo ship which sank in the Taiwan Strait on Thursday morning.
"We dispatched two search vessels this morning to join the vessel which remained at the scene last night," a duty officer at the National Search and Rescue Center said.
"But the situation is the same as yesterday: Of the 19 crew, 12 were rescued, five remain missing and two bodies were found," he said.
The 12 rescued crew members were sent to China and Hong Kong to recuperate.
The Pamela Dream, carrying logs from Malaysia to South Korea, sank between China's coastal city of Fuzhou and Taiwan's Matsu island group between 7am and 8am on Thursday.
Chief Officer Boris Tersintsev, 36, said he felt shocked after coming ashore in Hong Kong a day after he and crew member Yevgeniy Kachayev, 23, were rescued from the Taiwan Strait by the Aurora, a superliner operated by P&O Cruises.
Taiwan's National Search and Rescue Center picked up the SOS and sent a rescue vessel and two helicopters to the scene of the accident.
The center also appealed for help from China and Japan. China sent a rescue ship, which retrieved the bodies of two crewmen.
Four fishing boats picked up 12 crewmen.
The cause of the ship's sinking remains unknown.
This was the first joint sea rescue between Taiwan and China.
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