Hong Kong - Rescuers were Tuesday hoping to send divers inside a sunken tug boat with 18 Ukrainian sailors trapped on board, three days after it collided with a freighter off Hong Kong. Detailed plans of the Polish-made vessel have been obtained by the rescue team which hopes to be able to send divers in to look for survivors or the bodies of victims.
Hope has virtually disappeared of finding anyone alive in the boat which sank 35 metres to the seabed after colliding with a freighter off Hong Kong on Saturday night.
Divers aided by a large team of rescuers have been swimming to the vessel and rapping on its hull since Sunday morning but have so far detected no signs of life.
They have not been able to enter the tug boat, which landed upside down, but now have plans from the Ukrainian owners of the boat which should enable them to enter it under water.
A spokesman for the rescue team, which has been hampered by strong currents and low visibility under water, said they hoped to send divers into the vessel at low tide Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a team of international experts, including representatives from the tug boat's owners, was due to arrive in Hong Kong later Tuesday to help the rescue operation.
The crew members of the 80-metre tug boat were in cabins and the boiler room when the collision occurred between Hong Kong's Kowloon peninsula and Lantau Island.
Seven survivors were rescued from the water within an hour of the accident, but none have been found since and it took until Sunday to locate the tug boat on the seabed 400 metres from the scene of the collision.
The Polish-built tug boat, made in 1989, was loaded with drilling equipment and was heading for the South China Sea oilfield from Shenzhen in southern China at the time of the accident.
More than 130 people from fire, marine and other rescue departments as well as a government helicopter crew have been involved in the rescue operation.
If the 18 missing are confirmed dead, the incident will count as the worst single marine accident in Hong Kong's busy but closely regulated waters for decades.
