South African authorities were searching on Thursday for 26 crew members who went missing after a bulk carrier sank off South Africa's notoriously dangerous southeastern coast, rescue workers said.
The Alexandros T, which was sailing from Brazil to China with a load of iron ore, broke up at around 8pm on Wednesday in stormy weather around 300 nautical miles off the east coast harbor city of Port Elizabeth.
It sank with 33 crew members -- including four Greek citizens -- on board in heavy winds and swells of up to 5m.
South African Maritime Search and Rescue chief Andre Botes told reporters that apart from six crew members rescued overnight, one other sailor was plucked from a dinghy on Thursday morning.
"Another person was rescued off a life raft earlier this morning, so 26 crew members still remain missing," Botes said.
By late Thursday afternoon concerns were growing for the men's safety after a ship found around four life rafts in the area -- all of them empty.
"It is worrying. It means that the other 26 are all in the water," Botes said.
"The water temperature is around 18?C and their chance of survival is pretty good, but they will suffer from hypothermia by now and may be unable to attract the searchers' attention," he said.
National Sea Rescue Institute spokesman Craig Lambinon said the missing men wore life jackets at the time the ship sank.
"As far as we know only five crew members made it into a life raft. They were rescued together with another crew member floating in the water," Lambinon told reporters before the latest sailor was rescued.
Lambinon said the St Vincent and Grenadines-registered and Greek-operated carrier, with a gross tonnage of 91,164, sent out a distress call at around 4pm on Wednesday saying it was taking on water in the heavy swells.
"Several vessels in the area then sailed to the scene including the ship Fortune Express, which is looking for the survivors," he said.
An air force C-130 Hercules search plane that overflew the site spotted some five life rafts in the water, air force spokesman Ronald Maseko said, but when the Fortune Express investigated, the life rafts were empty.
"Our plane will continue to fly into the night for as long as possible to look out for flares from the survivors," Maseko said.
"The area where the ship sank is too far for our helicopters to reach, but we will drop more dinghies if we spot somebody in the water," he added.
Conditions have improved, Botes said, with the wind dropping from a raging 40 knots last night to 11 knots this morning.
He said more ships were en route to help in the rescue operation including the Chinese carrier Fu Le, which arrived on the scene at 2pm.
Four of the sailors are Greek, including the captain, his second-in-command and two mechanics, according to a statement.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS