Russian fishing vessel missing,with dozen crew trapped in ice
MOSCOW (AP) - A fishing vessel with about a dozen Russians on board went missing Friday off Russia's Pacific coast after sending a distress signal that it was sinking, officials said.
A search by air, sea and land turned up no sign of the Partnyor and had now been suspended until Saturday morning because of stormy weather and darkness, emergency service officials said.
"The ship is sinking," the Partnyor said in an SOS message read on television by a federal fisheries agency spokesman, Alexander Savelyev. "The only life raft opens with difficulty, the wrong way."
The Cambodian-flagged ship was about 6 nautical miles (11 kilometers) from Sakhalin Island's southwest coast when it sent the distress signal, said emergency services spokesman Sergei Viktorov.
There was no ice in that part of the sea.
To the north in the Sea of Okhotsk, two Russian fish-processing ships remained trapped in thick ice for an eighth day. A third trapped ship, the research vessel Professor Kizevetter, was freed by an icebreaker and was towed Friday to open waters.
The three vessels have sufficient fuel, food and water, and the more than 400 crew aboard are in no danger, officials said.
The Transportation Ministry said the Admiral Makarov icebreaker was headed back to free the Bereg Nadezhdy, a freighter used to refrigerate fish. The other trapped vessel, the floating Sodruzhestvo fish processing plant, would be the most difficult to free because it was wider than the icebreaker.
All thre
e ships became trapped in the ice on Dec. 31. Two trawlers got stuck later, but one was freed Wednesday and the other managed to free itself
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