11/7 Tass 2
MOSCOW — A criminal case has been opened over the MS Bulgaria wreck in the Volga River in Tatarstan, a source at the Russian Investigation Committee told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — A group of detectives and forensic experts of the central staff of the Russian Investigation Committee has gone to Tatarstan to assist the investigation of the MS Bulgaria wreck in the Volga River.
KAZAN — Tatarstan President Rustan Minnikhanov will cut short his vacation over the MS Bulgaria wreck in the Volga region, a source at the republican president’s press office told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — The MS Bulgaria owners and the tourist company claim that the sunken ship had 188 people onboard and 102 are now missing, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesperson Irina Andrianova told Itar-Tass. She said 148 of them were tourists, 22 were sailors, twelve were restaurant staff, four were animators and another two persons were taken aboard without consent of the tourist company. As of 9:00 p.m. Moscow time, 85 people were rescued. “Two are at hospital, 83 have reached Kazan onboard the Arabella ship and one died. A total of 102 people are missing,” she said.
MOSCOW — Emergency Situations Ministry divers are working on the site of the MS Bulgaria wreck. “The ship tilts to the right. The visibility is 0.7 meters,” ministry spokesperson Irina Adrianova told Itar-Tass. Equipment is being installed for enabling the divers to work at night, she said.
MOSCOW — A breach of vessel operation rules is the main theory of the MS Bulgaria wreck in the Volga River in Tatarstan, a detective told Itar-Tass. “The vessel could sink because it was very old. The excessive load is not excluded either. There is no information about a collision,” he said. There are other theories, as well. The MS Bulgaria was built in 1955 under the name, The Ukraine. It was making shuttle trips between Moscow and Rostov-on-Don in the end of the 1950s to transport foreign tourists. The ship was renamed into The Bulgaria in February 2010, and Vodoflot was using it since April 2010. Now the vessel belongs to Agrorechtur registered in Kazan.
MOSCOW — The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry has sent rescuers to the MS Bulgaria wreck site. “An Ilyushin Il-76 jet took off from the Ramenskoye airfield in the Moscow region at 8:24 p.m. local time to bring 16 divers, 33 rescuers and a team of psychologists to Kazan,” the ministry said.
MOSCOW — One hundred and five passengers of the MS Bulgaria that sank in the Volga River in Tatarstan are missing, Federal Tourism Agency spokesman Oleg Moseyev told Itar-Tass. “There were 188 people aboard the ship, including 148 tourists,” he said, adding that 83 people had been rescued. The agency has no information that the vessel allegedly was not repaired for a long time. “It is the most important to rescue people rather than to make presumptions. Detectives will hold the investigation,” he said.
KIEV — Sixteen people died in a fire at an elderly people’s home in the Rovno region of Ukraine last night, the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry said. Firemen rescued eleven house tenants. The blaze destroyed wooden walls and roofing. The preliminary cause of the accident is negligence.
KIEV — Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has ordered Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka to investigate the fire at the elderly people’s home in the Rovno region, the presidential press office said.
VLADIVOSTOK — Residents from the building that collapsed in Yakutsk on Saturday night are accommodated at an evacuation station in the building of a vocational school and provided with hot meals, water and necessities. Three balconies and a part of the back wall collapsed in the three-story building when 45 people were inside. Nobody was hurt, the press service of the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s department in Yakutia confirmed.
KRASNOYARSK — A private helicopter crashed in the Krasnoyarsk Territory on Sunday. The fate of the pilot is unknown, spokeswoman for the press service of the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s regional centre Yelena Yastrebkova told Itar-Tass.
KRASNOYARSK — The cockpit of a private helicopter, which crashed near Krasnoyarsk on Sunday, was found 200 meters away from the presumed crash scene. The strong current in the Yenisei River carried the chopper downstream, the commander of a Mil Mi-8 rescue helicopter told the territorial emergency situations department.
MOSCOW — The Russian Far East did not feel the Sunday quake in Japan. “The Sakhalin region did not feel the tremor, and no tsunami alert was given,” a source at the Sakhalin regional department of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — The number of wildfires in Russia grew over the past day, a representative of the Emergency Situations Ministry told Itar-Tass on Sunday. “The number of wildfires grew by 22, with the fire area increase by more than 2,000 hectares,” the source said.
MOSCOW — A ranking official of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, Vyacheslav Sizov who shot and wounded himself at his office at the department building on July 5, died on Sunday at the Sklifosovsky First Aid Institute, Itar-Tass learnt at this medical establishment.
KHABAROVSK — The wildfire zone in the Russian Far East more than doubled over the past day, a source at the Far Eastern Federal District Forestry Department told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
MOSCOW — A suspect is detained over the mass fight in Sagra, in which one man was killed, senior aide of the chief of the Russian Investigative Committee’s Sverdlovsk regional department Alexander Shulgin told Itar-Tass by telephone.
MAKHACHKALA— A local mosque imam was killed in Dagestan’s village of Karamakhi, the Buinaksk district, overnight, a Dagestani police source told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — The Russian Investigation Committee has confirmed the death of department head of the Prosecutor General’s Office Vyacheslav Sizov. “We confirm that,” Investigation Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass. Sizov died at the Moscow Sklifosofsky Emergency Hospital on Sunday. “Sizov had a surgery and stayed at the hospital’s intensive care unit. His condition was critical. He died on Sunday noon,” Markin said.
ASHGABAT — Two servicemen and 13 civilians died and houses and auxiliary buildings were partially damaged in the explosions in Abadan, Turkmenistan, the Turkmen governmental commission for the cleanup of the emergency aftermath said three days after the explosions and fires. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow chaired the meeting, the presidential press office said.