Seven crew members are still missing, as the search for a lost cargo barge continues in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East of Russia.
Local Emergency services say the last SOS message they received located the ship off Sakhalin’s Northern coast. A spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry explains how the search and rescue operation is proceeding. “This morning, at approximately 8:30, local time, we received an SOS signal from Quartz, a flat bottom barge in the Okhotsk Sea off northern Sakhalin. A rescue helicopter dispatched to the area was unable to locate the boat. Two inflatable rafts were later found on the Sakhalin shore with no people in them. It is yet unclear what happened to the barge and its crew,” commented Sergey Viktorov, Press-Secretary of Emergency Ministry.