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Strong tides, murky waters hampering search efforts

MOKPO/JINDO — Strong tides and murky waters off South Korea’s south-western coast were hampering efforts yesterday to find survivors from a ferry accident on Wednesday that left hundreds of passengers missing, most of them high school students.

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MOKPO/JINDO — Strong tides and murky waters off South Korea’s south-western coast were hampering efforts yesterday to find survivors from a ferry accident on Wednesday that left hundreds of passengers missing, most of them high school students.

Twenty-eight passengers were officially listed as dead, 179 have been rescued and 268 are missing, presumed trapped in the stricken vessel, out of 475 passengers and crew bound from Incheon to the holiday island of Jeju.

Among the passengers on the ferry, about 340 were students and teachers from Danwon High School in Ansan, an industrial town near Seoul. They were on an outing to Jeju and account for about 250 of those missing. Hopes are fading that any will be found alive.

“We cannot even see the ship’s white colour. Our people are just touching the hull with their hands,” Mr Kim Chun-il, a diver from Undine Marine Industries, told relatives gathered near the site of the rescue effort in the port city of Jindo.

Mr Kim said two divers had to return to the surface when an air pump stopped and strong tides were impeding the rescue.

Rescuers have pumped air into the vessel, but divers have not yet entered areas of the ship where many of the missing are believed to be.

Coastguard officials said that divers made several attempts to make it to the passenger areas but failed.

Officials warned the rescue work would be painstaking and difficult. One of the leaders of the diving effort, Mr Hwang Dae-sik, said underwater visibility was so poor, and currents so rapid, that the work was “like moving against the wind of a typhoon while barely being able to see your palm”. Currents were moving diagonally across the hull, he said, creating swirls and making it tricky for divers to enter the ship.

“We have been trying to put ropes into the ship so we can use them as guides as we crawl into the ship in the darkness and hopefully bring out missing people,” he added. “By Thursday, we placed those ropes into the fourth floor and today we are using them to enter.”

Most of the passengers on the 6,825-tonne ferry had cabins on the fourth floor. But survivors said that at the time of the sinking, many people were trapped on the third floor, which had a cafeteria and a game room. From the fourth floor, Mr Hwang said, the divers hoped to expand their reach to other parts of the ship.

Rescuers were also using high-pressure hoses to pump oxygen into the ship, which was underwater by yesterday, with only a tiny tip of its hull occasionally appearing between the waves. The rescuers hope the oxygen will reach people who might still be alive in air pockets in the submerged vessel.

A crane had arrived on the scene and others were on their way, in preparation for the eventual salvaging of the vessel. But experts said it would take days, if not weeks, to complete the difficult task of raising the ship.

Relatives were in mourning overnight in a hospital in the city of Mokpo, close to the port city of Jindo, which is serving as a rescue centre.

Yesterday, the families of the missing passengers issued a statement, calling for stepped-up search and rescue efforts. Among other things, they said they were stopped by the authorities when they tried to visit the scene on Wednesday, along with private divers they had engaged.

And when they were finally allowed to witness the rescue operations, they claimed the operations were not as extensive as what the government had pledged. AGENCIES

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