The Japanese and South Korean coast guards were still looking for eight of the twenty-two crew members of a ship that sank the previous night off southwestern Japan on Wednesday, January 25, at sea. from eastern China.
“A total of fourteen were rescued” so far, a Japanese coastguard spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We still do not know their condition and their nationalities. » Eleven of them were in a state ” unconscious “told AFP the South Korean Coast Guard, which found six of the castaways, who were transported to the port of Nagasaki (southwest of Japan).
the JinTian, a 6,651-ton Hong Kong-registered cargo ship issued an SOS late Tuesday evening Tokyo time while about 110 kilometers west of the Danjo Islands, a remote and uninhabited micro-archipelago located in the southwest of Japan.
Cold wave
Three other commercial boats were in the area at the time and were able to rescue several of the castaways, according to the Japanese coast guard. A Japanese Coast Guard plane and two boats were on site Wednesday, and other ships from Japan and South Korea were expected to arrive as reinforcements, authorities in Tokyo and Seoul said.
The sinking of JinTian came as an unusually severe cold snap hit East Asia. Daytime temperatures on the islands closest to the sinking site barely reach 3°C.
According to the Japanese Coast Guard, the crew of the JinTian included a total of fourteen Chinese and eight Burmese.