Alwaght- A cargo ship sank 50 kilometres from Assaluyeh port in southern Iran earlier today, with an Iranian rescue operation has so far taken off the sunken vessel all but one of the crew members.
"Twenty-nine crew members have so far been saved, and rescue operations are continuing to find another team member," an official from Iran's Bushehr Province told IRNA.
The Dubai-based Salem Al Makrani Cargo Company confirmed its ship the Al Salmy 6 sank on Thursday some 50 kilometres off the coast of Iran and that Iranian authorities had sent a vessel to rescue the crew members.
A local Iranian maritime protection office chief, Hojjat Khosravi, told IRNA, “The Naji rescue boat and 2 tow-boats were sent to the scene to rescue the crew but due to poor weather and strong storms, the Emirati ship sank before their arrival.”
In the early hours of the rescue operation, Captain Nizar Qaddoura, the operations manager of the Salem Al Makrani Cargo Company, said that rescuers had saved 16 crew members and another 11 had made it onto a life raft, while one person was saved by a nearby tanker. Two crew members were still in the water.
The ship was on route to Umm Qads port of Iraq, with its crew from Sudan, Pakistan, Uganda, Tanzania, and India, and Ethiopia.
