‘No hope of survivors’ in Iranian tanker fire, says official

Smoke is seen from Panama-registered Sanchi tanker carrying Iranian oil that caught ablaze after it collided with a Chinese freight ship in the East China Sea, in this January 9, 2018 handout picture released by China's Ministry of Transport. The collision and disaster of the Sanchi, which carried 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis, had transfixed an Iran still reeling from days of protests and unrest that swept the country at the start of the year. State TV quoted Mahmoud Rastad, the chief of Iran’s maritime agency, as saying: “There is no hope of finding survivors among the (missing) 29 members of the crew.”

Chinese officials could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday night, though the state-run broadcaster CGTN reported that the Sanchi had sunk. The Sanchi, carrying 136,000 tonnes of light crude oil from Iran, has been in flames since colliding with the CF Crystal, a Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter, 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai on January 6. Rastad said information from members of the Crystal crew suggested all the personnel on the Sanchi died in the first hour of the accident "due to the explosion and the release of gas". The salvage team recovered the voyage data recorder, or “black box” from the bridge, before leaving the vessel less than half an hour after boarding because the wind had shifted and “thick toxic smoke” had complicated the operation, Xinhua said. Just three bodies from the tanker Sanchi's crew of 32, composed of 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis, have been recovered.
The National Iranian Tanker Company-operated MV Sanchi sinks, following its January 6 collision with a Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship off Shanghai, China, leaving no survivors.