A Norwegian offshore oil contractor has been asked by the Russian and Norwegian governments to assist in the recovery of the 118 bodies on board the Kursk. A spokesman for the company said that they will assess the risks involved to their divers before making their decision but he added that the operation could take weeks. There is now concern about what to do with the wreck, which contains two nuclear reactors. They were shut down moments after the disaster, and the Russians maintain there is no danger of radiation leaks.
Russia has confirmed that all crewmen on the Kursk are dead, after specialist Norwegian and British divers established that the entire vessel was flooded. Russian television reported that one body had already been found near an escape hatch. The Russian Navy has said that the operation to remove the bodies of 118 sailors from the wreck of the Kursk will take at least one month. The teams of specialist divers from Norway and Britain earlier said that they intend to abandon the rescue operation.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that the Russian Navy has found a fragment from a foreign submarine near the wreckage of the Kursk. It quoted military sources as saying that the submarine was probably British.
Russia had earlier asked the specialist Norwegian divers on the site to help with the recovery of the bodies. The divers had been the first to establish that there were no survivors on the wreck of the Kursk. A spokesman for the Norwegian rescue operation said that the divers had made the assessment after opening the inner hatch of an escape door of the vessel. They found the compartment behind the door was flooded.
Earlier, three divers succeeded in opening an outer escape hatch of the submarine but found it was flooded. The command of the international rescue operation decided to use Norwegian-led divers and not a British underwater rescue craft to get into the submarine.
An opinion poll conducted in Moscow has shown that more than two-thirds of Russians believe that the authorities should have accepted foreign help sooner in the rescue operation. The Russian government accepted assistance from Norway and Britain four days after the Kursk sank.
