Rescuers scour sea for 11 missing in Hong Kong ship sinking

HONG KONG: An air and sea rescue mission scoured choppy waters near Hong Kong Tuesday in a desperate search for 11 crew still missing more than 24 hours after their Chinese cargo ship sank.

The Zhong Xing 2, which was laden with cement, went down after colliding with a container ship in the early hours of Monday just south of the island of Po Toi, on the edge of Hong Kong´s maritime territory.

A 46-year-old mainland Chinese crewman is so far the sole survivor of the ship´s crew of 12 -- he was plucked from the sea by a passing fishing boat.

Chinese authorities are coordinating the rescue operation, sending 15 ships and three helicopters to hunt for the missing crew, according to China´s official state news agency Xinhua.

Hong Kong also deployed a helicopter and eight rescue boats, but rescue efforts have so far been in vain.

"We are still trying to find the wreckage and the missing 11 persons," a Hong Kong government spokesman told.

The cause of the accident is not yet known and is under investigation, he said.

The 97-metre (318 feet) Zhong Xing 2, which was carrying cement from the Chinese province of Hebei to the southern island of Hainan, collided with the Marshall Islands-registered MOL Motivator container ship -- more than three times its size.

The cargo ship sank two nautical miles (around four kilometres) south-west of Po Toi.

Fears over the safety of Hong Kong´s waterways were sparked after a ferry crash in October 2012 that killed 39 -- the city´s worst maritime disaster for more than 40 years. The collision between a high-speed ferry and a pleasure boat shocked the Asian financial hub, which prides itself on its good safety record.

Waters around the territory are notoriously crowded with hundreds of vessels -- from tiny wooden fishing boats to gigantic container ships -- plying the routes to and from one of the world´s busiest ports. In other major incidents, a 190-metre long cargo ship sank 80 kilometres (50 miles) south-west of Hong Kong in August 2013, when a powerful typhoon generated towering waves.

The 21-member crew of the bulk carrier Trans Summer were forced to abandon ship as the vessel tipped on its side and sank, triggering a rescue by two helicopter teams and a passing ship.

In November of the same year, a high-speed double-deck hydrofoil ferry travelling from Hong Kong to Macau collided with an "unidentified object", injuring 87 people.

South Korean PM offers to resign over ferry sinking

 

AP South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won bows to the nation after offering his resignation at the Central Government Complex in Seoul.

South Korea’s Prime Minister offered to resign on Sunday over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking, blaming “deep-rooted evils” and societal irregularities for a tragedy that has left more than 300 people dead or missing and led to widespread shame, fury and finger-pointing.

The resignation offer comes amid rising indignation over claims by the victims’ relatives that the government didn’t do enough to rescue or to protect their loved ones. Most of the missing and dead were high school students on a school trip. Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry that sank April 16, a prosecutor said.

South Korean executive power is largely concentrated in the President, Park Geun-hye, so the resignation offer by Prime Minister Chung Hong-won appears to be largely symbolic. There was no immediate word from Ms. Park about whether she would accept Mr. Chung’s resignation.

Mr. Chung was heckled by relatives and his car was blocked when he visited a shelter on an island near the site of the sinking a week ago. On Sunday, he issued an extraordinary statement to reporters in Seoul on the national tragedy.

“As I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as Prime Minister,” Mr. Chung said. “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”

Meanwhile, Yang Jung-jin of the joint investigation team said two helmsmen and two members of the steering crew were taken in on preliminary arrest warrants issued on Friday. Formal arrest warrants were issued on Saturday night. Eleven other crew members, including the captain, had been formally arrested earlier.

Divers have recovered 187 bodies and 115 people are believed to be missing, though the government-wide emergency task force has said the ship’s passengers list could be inaccurate. Only 174 people survived, including 22 of the 29 crew members.

The seven surviving crew members who have not been arrested or detained held non-marine jobs such as chef or steward, Mr. Yang said in a telephone interview from Mokpo, the southern city near the wreck site where prosecutors are based.

South Korean television aired video of police escorting the four men to court. All four wore baseball caps that hid their faces, and at least one was limping.

Capt. Lee Joon-seok told reporters after his arrest that he withheld the evacuation order because rescuers had yet to arrive and he feared for passengers’ safety in the cold water. Crew members have also defended their actions.

Officials in charge of the search effort said divers had reached two large rooms where many of the lost may lie dead, but the search has been suspended since Saturday because of bad weather. Currents were also strong, as they were in the first several days of the search, when divers struggled in vain even to get inside the submerged vessel.

Large objects that toppled when the ferry tipped over and sank are believed to be keeping divers from reaching bodies in at least one of the rooms.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries also said it would soon change ferry systems so that passenger, vehicle and cargo information is processed electronically. There is not only uncertainty about how many people were on the Sewol, but a huge discrepancy regarding the amount of cargo it was carrying when it sank.

The Sewol was carrying an estimated 3,608 tons of cargo, according to an executive of the company that loaded it. That far exceeds what the captain claimed in paperwork 150 cars and 657 tons of other cargo, according to the coast guard and is more than three times what an inspector who examined the vessel during a redesign last year said it could safely carry.

Mr. Yang, the prosecutor, said that the cause of the sinking could be due to excessive veering, improper stowage of cargo, modifications made to the ship and tidal influence. He said investigators would determine the cause by consulting with experts and using simulations.

Heartbreaking texts from students on sinking S Korea ferry

SEOUL: Heart-wrenching messages of fear, love and despair, sent by high school students from a sinking South Korean ferry added extra emotional weight Thursday to a tragedy that has stunned the entire nation.

Nearly 300 people -- most of them students on a high school trip to a holiday island -- are still missing after the ferry capsized and sank on Wednesday morning.

"Sending this in case I may not be able to say this again. Mom, I love you," one student Shin Young-Jin said in a text to his mother that was widely circulated in the South Korean media.

"Oh, I love you too son," texted back his mother who was unaware at the time that her son was caught in a life and death struggle to escape the rapidly sinking vessel.

Unlike many others, the exchange had a happy ending as Shin was one of only 179 survivors rescued before the ferry capsized and went under the water.Others were not so fortunate.

Another student, 16-year-old Kim Woong-Ki sent a desperate text for help to his elder brother as the ship listed violently over to one side.

"My room is tilting about 45 degrees. My mobile is not working very well," Kim messaged.

Seeking to reassure him, his brother said he was sure help was on the way.

"So don´t panic and just do whatever you´re told to do. Then you´ll be fine," he messaged back.

There was no further communication and Kim was listed among the 287 people on board still unaccounted for.

Sadly his brother´s advice was similar to that of the crew who controversially ordered passengers to stay put when the ship first foundered.

Angry relatives said this resulted in the passengers getting trapped when the ferry keeled over, cutting off routes of escape.

That grim scenario was encapsulated in the texts of an 18-year-old student, identified in the local media by her surname Shin.

"Dad, don´t worry. I´m wearing a life vest and am with other girls. We´re inside the ship, still in the hallway," the girl messaged to her father.

Her distraught father texted her to try and get out, but it was already too late.

"Dad, I can´t. The ship is too tilted. The hallway is crowded with so many people," she responded in a final message.

Some parents managed a last, traumatic phone call with their children as they tried to escape.

"She told me the ship was tilted over and she couldn´t see anything," one mother recalled of a panicked conversation with her student daughter.

"She said ´I haven´t put on the life jacket yet´, and then the phone went dead," the mother told the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper