29 Sailors Still Missing inThai Navy Ship Sinking
Rescuers are combing the Gulf of Thailand on the second day of a search for 29 sailors still missing after a Thai warship sank.
The HTMS Sukhothai carrying 105 crew sank off the south-east coast on Sunday night after losing power in a storm.
Search teams have saved 76 people so far, including one man found on Tuesday after two nights in rough seas.
But close to a third of the crew is still missing. The navy has not disclosed if there were any fatalities.
The Thai navy and air force resumed the search on Tuesday with “hundreds of officers on four navy ships as well as several helicopters deployed to scan a 50-sq-km (30-sq-mile) area.”
A Thai naval commander had earlier suggested search crews had only a two-day window to find anyone alive in the ocean.
“Life jacket, life buoy and their floating technique allow us 48 hours to save their life,” Vice Admiral Pichai Lorchusakul said.
“Therefore, Tuesday, will be the highlight. We will try to do as much as we can to save them,” he added.
Several sailors have already been found, exhausted and some unconscious.
“We found this guy holding a life buoy… he was floating in the water for 10 hours,” Captain Krapich Korawee-Paparwit of the HTMS Kraburi said.
He added that the man, still conscious, had a minor head wound and “sore eyes as he was exposed to sea water.”
Other sailors were found in a life raft after they jumped from the sinking vessel. Pictures and footage shared by the navy on Twitter show survivors wrapped in blankets and being taken to hospital.
Navy officials initially said 106 people were on board the ship, but revised that number to 105 on Tuesday.
The HTMS Sukhothai, a 76m-long corvette, had been on day two of a routine patrol off Thailand’s south-eastern coast when it got caught in a storm on Sunday night.
The Thai navy said “water flooded its hull and then the electricity room, cutting the power.”
Dramatic pictures posted on the navy’s Twitter account shows the vessel listing onto its starboard side, before the vessel went under around 23:30 local time on Sunday (16:30 GMT).
Other naval ships were immediately alerted and sent to assist, but only the HTMS Kraburi frigate reached the vessel before it sank, about 32km, 20 miles, east of Bang Saphan in Prachuap Khiri Khan province.
The Thai navy said this was the first time it had lost a ship in such circumstances, and it would launch an investigation.
However naval experts have questioned how such a disaster struck a ship on a routine parole.
BBC /Shakirat Sadiq
