Eighteen Ukrainian sailors were feared dead Monday after they were trapped underwater in their capsized tugboat in Hong Kong for nearly 40 hours amid strong currents, a salvage company said. "Their chances for survival are very slim," spokesman Zhang Jianwen of China's Guangzhou Salvage Bureau told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
Divers were searching for bodies, and a Chinese salvage boat was stabilizing the Ukrainian tugboat and preparing it for a move from its current depth of 115 feet to shallower waters to ease rescue efforts, Zhang said.
Strong currents were hindering those efforts, government spokeswoman Heidi Liu said.
Earlier, officials had said the sailors could have found a pocket of air that would enable them to survive. However, divers did not hear any return signal when they knocked on the capsized boat Sunday.
The tugboat Neftegaz 67 - which had been detained in Hong Kong in 2003 for safety problems - sank and has been lying upside down underwater since late Saturday, when it collided with Chinese cargo ship Yao Hai in waters northwest of Hong Kong's outlying Lantau island.
The 264-foot-long Ukrainian vessel sank quickly but the Chinese ship suffered only bow damage and stayed afloat, officials said. Only seven of the 25 on the Ukrainian ship were found.
Documents from Hong Kong's Marine Department said the Neftegaz 67 was detained in September 2003 because the did not provide "means of escape" and "escape breathing apparatus" and that ship personnel weren't familiar with safety procedures.
It wasn't immediately clear if those problems were addressed during the detention. Government spokeswoman Liu said she couldn't immediately comment.
People who answered the phone at Chernomorneftegaz, the Russian oil and gas exploration company that operates Neftegaz 67, hung up on several calls from the AP.
The cause of the Saturday's accident wasn't immediately clear. Officials say weather conditions were reasonable at the time of the accident and neither ship was overloaded.
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