“Sanchi” Sank; Iran Declares One Day of National Mourning

After it was officially announced that all crew members of the oil tanker Sanchi have lost their lives and the tanker has completely sunk, Iran’s Cabinet of Ministers declared Monday, December 25 (Dey 25) as a day of national mourning throughout the country.

In a statement issued by Iran’s Cabinet of Ministers on Sunday evening through domestic news agencies, the crew members of the oil tanker Sanchi were referred to as “martyrs in service.”

Earlier, Mohammad Rastad, the head of the Ports and Maritime Organization, stating that “nothing of the Sanchi oil tanker remains on the water,” said: “The ship has completely sunk and it seems unlikely that we will gain access to the remaining missing bodies.”

Previously, the bodies of three crew members and personnel of the oil tanker were found. Nevertheless, their identities have not been determined so far.

According to ILNA news agency, Mr. Rastad on Sunday, December 24, regarding the time of delivery of the bodies of these three people, said that “after going through legal procedures, they will be handed over to the ship’s representatives in China and delivered to Iran.”

The spokesman of the Sanchi oil tanker incident investigation committee had previously told ILNA: “Usually, when a ship sinks, access to and identification of crew members becomes very difficult.”

IRNA news agency also reported in a dispatch announcing “the tragic end of the Sanchi tragedy” that “the Iranian oil tanker sank.”

Hours before this, the head of the Ports and Maritime Organization, in a conversation with the state news agency IRNA, reported the death of all crew members and personnel of the Iranian ship in the early hours of the incident, attributing the reason to “the release of toxic gases and the severity of the explosion.”

He, who is in Shanghai, China, said that “efforts to extinguish the fire and enter the ship to rescue the bodies of the crew, despite all efforts, were not possible due to successive explosions.”

Meanwhile, according to ILNA, Ali Rabiei, the Minister of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare, said: “The Chinese said from the very first day that all Sanchi crew members had died.”

He did not explain why this matter had not been announced until now.

This was while Iranian officials had repeatedly reported the possibility of crew members and personnel of this oil tanker being trapped in the engine room and added that to save their lives, entry to the ship must be made as soon as possible.

This was while IRNA reported that due to the intensity of the fire in the stricken Sanchi oil tanker near China’s coast, entry of rescue and recovery teams to this vessel is not possible.

Based on this report, the temperature of the Sanchi oil tanker reached 350 degrees and “conditions for entry are by no means available.” It has been stated that the height of the fire now reaches more than 100 meters.

A Chinese rescue team, on Saturday, December 23, after the incident and the fire on Iran’s oil-carrying tanker, removed the bodies of two victims and the ship’s black box from it.

Previously, the body of one of the victims had also been found.

Following the collision of Sanchi with a Chinese bulk carrier in the East China Sea on December 16, 32 crew members of the oil tanker went missing. 30 of the missing were Iranian and two others were from Bangladesh.

The Sanchi oil tanker, flying the flag of Panama, was carrying 136,000 tons of Iran’s exported liquefied gas to South Korea.

In this incident, the Chinese cargo ship suffered minor damage and 21 of its crew members, all Chinese nationals, were rescued.

Source: Radio Farda