Six Bodies Said Pulled From Kursk
MOSCOW (AP) - Investigators have pulled the remains of six crew members from the nuclear submarine Kursk and spotted four other bodies for retrieval, Russia's prosecutor-general said Friday.
Three of the bodies were removed from the wreck on Thursday and the other three on Friday morning, Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Meanwhile, investigators were preparing to enter the sixth reactor section of the submarine to cut all cables and weld closed all openings, Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, the Northern Fleet commander, told Interfax. He said that the same procedures are followed when decommissioned submarines are being prepared for dismantling.
Ustinov is leading the team of investigators examining the mangled carcass of the Kursk in a dry dock in Roslyakovo, near the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk.
The bulk of the Kursk was raised from the Barents Sea floor on Oct. 8 in a $65 million salvage operation performed by the Dutch consortium Mammoet-Smit International. The mangled forward compartment, where the Kursk's torpedoes were located, was left on the bottom of the sea out of concern that it could break off and destabilize the lifting operation.
Forensic experts rushed inside the Kursk once it was dried out Thursday, to quickly take bodies out to avoid damaging contact with the air.
Most of the Kursk's 118 sailors were blown to dust by powerful explosions that sank the submarine during naval exercises in August 2000, but at least 23 survived the crash for hours in the stern compartments, according to letters found by divers who recovered 12 bodies from the sunken vessel a year ago.
After the bodies are recovered, the next immediate task would be to secure the Kursk's nuclear reactors and its 22 Granit cruise missiles, each containing enough explosives to sink an enemy aircraft carrier.
Originally published October 26, 2001.
