Container ship sinks off India's south coast with hazardous cargo
The vessel went down with 640 containers, including 12 containing calcium carbide. (Indian defence public relations office of Mumbai/AFP pic)
BENGALURU : A Liberian-flagged container ship with hazardous cargo has sunk off the coast of Kerala in India's south, the navy said today after rescuing all 24 crew members safely.
India's navy said the MSC ELSA 3, listed as a 184m-long freight ship, which was sailing from the Indian port of Vizhinjam to Kochi, ran into trouble yesterday and issued a distress call.
Navy aircraft scrambled to the area and spotted two life rafts, with the container ship listing at a dangerous angle some 38 nautical miles southwest of Kochi.
'All 24 crew members on board were rescued,' the ministry of defence said in a statement, with the Indian coast guard (ICG) and a navy patrol boat collecting the sailors, who were from Georgia, Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines.
'The vessel went down with 640 containers, including 13 with hazardous cargo and 12 containing calcium carbide,' the statement said.
The defence ministry did not specify what was inside the containers it said were hazardous.
Calcium carbide is used in the chemical industry, including for fertiliser production and steelmaking.
'Given the sensitive marine ecosystem along Kerala's coast, ICG has activated full pollution response preparedness,' the navy said.
The vessel also contained some 370 tonnes of fuel and oil but, while the coast guard had deployed 'detection systems', it said that 'so far, no oil spill has been reported'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Malay Mail
5 hours ago
- Malay Mail
India monsoon floods kill five in Assam, trigger landslides and urban chaos as red alert issued
GUWAHATI (India), May 31 — Torrential monsoon rains in India's north-east triggered landslides and floods that swept away and killed at least five people in Assam, disaster officials said today. India's annual monsoon season from June to September offers respite from intense summer heat and is crucial for replenishing water supplies, but also brings widespread death and destruction. The deaths recorded are among the first of this season, with scores often killed over the course of the rains across India, a country of 1.4 billion people. The monsoon is a colossal sea breeze that brings South Asia 70-80 per cent of its annual rainfall. Rivers swollen by the lashing rain — including the mighty Brahmaputra and its tributaries — broke their banks across the region. But the intensity of rain and floods has increased in recent years, with experts saying climate change is exacerbating the problem. Assam State Disaster Management Authority officials on Saturday confirmed five deaths in the last 24 hours. A red alert warning had been issued for 12 districts of Assam after non-stop rains over the last three days led to flooding in many urban areas. The situation was particularly bad in the state capital Guwahati. City authorities have disconnected the electricity in several districts to cut the risk of electrocution. Several low-lying areas of Guwahati were flooded, with hundreds of families forced to abandon homes to seek shelter elsewhere. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said his government had deployed rescue teams. 'We have been reviewing the impending situation for the last three days', he said in a statement, saying that supplies of rice had been dispatched as food aid. South Asia is getting hotter and in recent years has seen shifting weather patterns, but scientists are unclear on how exactly a warming planet is affecting the highly complex monsoon. On Monday, lashing rains swamped India's financial capital Mumbai, where the monsoon rains arrived some two weeks earlier than usual, the earliest for nearly a quarter century, according to weather forecasters. — AFP
Free Malaysia Today
10 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
India orders probe into ‘mercilessly beaten' journalist
The National Human Rights Commission demanded Odisha police provide a report within two weeks. (EPA Images pic) NEW DELHI : India's human rights body demanded on Friday that police investigate the brutal assault of a journalist who was tied, beaten and paraded through a village while reporting on alleged corruption. Video footage circulated on social media showed journalist Bijay Pradhan being beaten up on May 25 after he went to report on construction of a housing scheme in the eastern state of Odisha. 'Reportedly, he was suddenly attacked… The victim's legs and hands were tied, and he was paraded through the village before being tied to a pole and mercilessly beaten,' the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said on Friday. It demanded police in Odisha provide a report within two weeks. 'The victim's mobile phones and video camera were also smashed by the perpetrators, and he was threatened not to report anything about the incident,' the NHRC added in a statement. Four people suspected of assaulting the journalist have been arrested, according to media reports. India, where incidents of intimidation and assaulting journalists are not uncommon, is ranked 151 on the World Press Freedom Index, run by Reporters Without Borders. In January, India's media watchdog demanded a thorough investigation after the battered body of a journalist, who had widely reported on corruption in neighbouring Chhattisgarh state, was found stuffed in a septic tank covered with concrete.
Malay Mail
a day ago
- Malay Mail
Pakistan military chief says troop drawdown underway, warns next conflict with India could hit whole region
Pakistan, India had built up troops along border region during conflict Pakistani general warns of threat of escalation in future Mirza warns there might not be enough time for future international mediation SINGAPORE, May 30 — Pakistan and India are close to reducing the troop build up along their border to levels before conflict erupted between the nuclear-armed neighbours this month, a top Pakistani military official told Reuters on Friday, although he warned the crisis had increased the risk of escalation in the future. Both sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery in four days of clashes, their worst fighting in decades, before a ceasefire was announced. The spark for the latest fighting between the old enemies was an April 22 attack in Indian Kashmir that killed 26 people, most of them tourists. New Delhi blamed the incident on 'terrorists' backed by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad. On May 7, India launched missiles at what it said were 'terrorist infrastructure' sites across the border and as Pakistan responded with its own attacks, both countries built up additional forces along the frontier. General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the two militaries had started the process of drawing down troop levels. 'We have almost come back to the pre-22nd April situation... we are approaching that, or we must have approached that by now,' said Mirza, the most senior Pakistani military official to speak publicly since the conflict. India's ministry of defence and the office of the Indian chief of defence staff did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the remarks by Mirza. Mirza, who is in Singapore to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue forum, said while there was no move towards nuclear weapons during this conflict, it was a dangerous situation. 'Nothing happened this time,' he said. 'But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time, because when the crisis is on, the responses are different.' He also said the risk of escalation in the future had increased since the fighting this time was not limited to the disputed territory of Kashmir, the scenic region in the Himalayas that both nations rule in part but claim in full. The two sides attacked military installations in their mainlands but neither has acknowledged any serious damage. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan this month that New Delhi would target 'terrorist hideouts' across the border again if there were new attacks on India. 'Dangerous trend' The two countries have fought three major wars, two of them over Kashmir, and numerous armed skirmishes since both were born out of British colonial India in 1947. India blames Pakistan for an insurgency in its part of Kashmir that began in 1989 and has killed tens of thousands. Pakistan says it provides only moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris seeking self-determination. 'This (conflict) lowers the threshold between two countries who are contiguous nuclear the future, it will not be restricted to the disputed territory. It would come down to (the) whole of India and (the) whole of Pakistan,' Mirza said. 'This is a very dangerous trend.' Reuters has reported that the rapid escalation of hostilities ended in part because of behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving the U.S., India and Pakistan, and the key role played by Washington in brokering peace. India has denied any third-party role in the ceasefire and said that any engagement between India and Pakistan has to be bilateral. But Mirza warned that international mediation might be difficult in the future because of a lack of crisis management mechanisms between the countries. 'The time window for the international community to intervene would now be very less, and I would say that damage and destruction may take place even before that time window is exploited by the international community,' he said. Pakistan was open to dialogue, he added, but beyond a crisis hotline between the directors general of military operations and some hotlines at the tactical level on the border, there was no other communication between the two countries. India's foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday 'talks and terror don't go together' in response to a question on the possibility of dialogue with Pakistan. Mirza said there were no backchannel discussions, or informal talks, to ease tensions. He also said he had no plans to meet General Anil Chauhan, India's chief of defence staff, who is also in Singapore for the Shangri-La forum. 'These issues can only be resolved by dialogue and consultations, on the table. They cannot be resolved on the battlefield,' Mirza said. — Reuters
