The fire of two cargo ships off the southern coast of the Crimea peninsula has probably killed 20 sailors.
After the rescue of ten bodies, the rescue services have given up any hope, the ten remaining missing crew members to find alive, as the Russian news agency Tass reported on Tuesday morning, according to the shipping authority. Twelve sailors could be saved. The fire had evidently been triggered by an explosion and, according to the report, had not been extinguished on Tuesday morning.
The crew members are from India and Turkey, and according to Tass, there is an intern from Libya. The surviving sailors suffered partly burn injuries, partly subcoolings after their jump into the ice cold water. Both ships sail under the flag of Tanzania, one of them was a gas tanker.
The accident occurred off the southern coast of the Crimea – at the entrance to the Kerch Strait. Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Therefore, the situation in this part of the Black Sea is curious. Russian border guards fired on three Ukrainian naval ships there in November and arrested the crew for alleged border violations.
In front of the Kerch Strait, ships often have to wait weeks for passage to the Sea of Azov. Ukraine complains that ships calling at Ukrainian ports are harassed by the Russian authorities.
