Seoul,South Korean dive teams struggled today to gain access to blocked cabins of a submerged ferry that sank nearly three weeks ago, as the confirmed death toll from the disaster rose to 242.
Six
more bodies were recovered early today, 18 days after the 6,825-tonne Sewol
capsized and sank with 476 people on board - most of them schoolchildren -
while 60 remain unaccounted for.
"Rescuers
using some equipment are trying to open blocked cabins," spokesman Ko
Myeong-Suk told a morning briefing. The search has been hampered by fast
currents and high waves, while dive teams have been working in challenging and
sometimes hazardous conditions. They
have to grope their way down guiding ropes to the sunken ship, struggling
through narrow passageways and rooms littered with floating debris in silty
water. As days go by,
personal belongings and other items from the ship have been spotted further and
further away, fuelling concerns that some victims of the ferry disaster may
never be found. One body
was retrieved Friday by a fishing vessel four kilometres (two miles) away from
the recovery site, and another was found two kilometres away on Wednesday.As
a precaution, recovery workers have put rings of netting around the site.
Bedding materials from the ship were found as far as 30 kilometres from the
disaster site on Friday. It
is one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, made all the more shocking
by the loss of so many young lives. Of
those on board, 325 were students from the same high school in Ansan city, just
south of Seoul. Public
anger has focused on the captain and crew members who abandoned the ship while
hundreds were trapped inside, and on the authorities as more evidence emerges
of lax safety standards and possible corruption among state regulators. The captain and 14 of his crew
have been arrested. The
Sewol's regular captain, who was off duty on the day of the accident, has told
prosecutors that the ferry operator - Chonghaejin Marine Co - "brushed
aside" repeated warnings that the 20-year-old ship had stability issues
following a renovation in 2012.
एक टिप्पणी भेजें