Associated Press
MOSCOW – Charred and rusting cavities littered with torn metal shards are all that remain of the compartments where commanders and most of the crew of the Kursk were stationed when explosions sank the nuclear submarine, investigators said Saturday.
“What happened inside these compartments was hell,” said Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, who presented a seven-minute film shot by investigators inside the portion of the Kursk lifted from the Barents Sea floor and hauled into dry dock this month.
“Everything is littered with equipment that was destroyed in the explosion,” Ustinov said. “The strong alloys from which these compartments are built were simply ripped apart.”
In one part of the film, shown on Russian television, the camera focuses on the spot where the Kursk’s periscope once stood – now a surreally twisted column of metal. “The explosion … wiped out everything here,” Ustinov said.
The chief prosecutor is leading a team investigating the wrecked submarine, which sank during naval exercises on Aug. 12, 2000, killing all 118 crewmen.
He said the Kursk’s commanders and most of its crew were killed in the front compartments as two powerful explosions in the bow sent the mighty submarine to the sea bottom.
“In the 135 seconds that passed between the first and the second explosions, they did not even have time to put on lifesaving equipment,” Ustinov said. “But even if this equipment had been put on, there was everything here – an explosion and fire – so nothing could have survived.”
Thirty-two bodies have been removed from the wreckage since it was brought to Roslyakovo, a port near Murmansk, the Russian Navy’s press service said late Saturday in a report cited by the Interfax news agency. Ustinov had said earlier in the day that 19 bodies had been found and 17 of them removed. Seven have been positively identified, he said.
The bodies found so far have been in the stern compartments, where letters found by divers who recovered 12 bodies from the sunken vessel a year ago indicated that at least 23 sailors survived for several hours after the explosions.
“We are finding the bodies of the dead, and the main cause of death is suffocation,” Ustinov said. He said experts believe the submarine was completely flooded within eight hours at the most – but that most ran out of breathable air before they could drown.
The cause of the disaster remains unknown. Russian officials have focused on the possibility that a torpedo misfired and exploded inside or near the Kursk during the exercise, but some say they believe it was struck by a foreign submarine or hit a World War II mine.
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