Rescuers of on Friday rescued three Bangladeshi crew members alive while retrieved two bodies from the Phuket coast in Thailand after a Bangladeshi cargo ship, ‘MV Hope’, tilted there on Thursday.Eleven crew members of the ship went missing early Thursday after the vessel tilted in the Andaman Sea.
However, eight people are still missing following the rescue of the three survivors. “The three survivors are surely from MV Hope as they have the Bangladeshi passports, but the confusion remains about the dead bodies,” said Captain Mohammad Ali, General Manager (GM) of Trade Bridge Shipping Ltd.
The cargo ship, owned by Trade Breeze Shipping, ran into trouble in the early hours on Thursday in rough sea, some 32 kilometers off an island near Phuket in southern Thailand.
Saima Quader Chowdhury owns the shipping company, Trade Breeze Shipping.
The two bodies were retrieved by German container ship Buxmoon and then transferred to the Royal Thai Navy offshore patrol vessel Pattani, Phuket News reports.
The Buxmoon has already rescued five live crew members on Thursday from one of the Hope’s lifeboats.
The identities of the two dead men found on Friday afternoon could not yet be confirmed, but it seems likely they are from the Hope.
The ship had 17 officers and crew on board when it began to struggle in the bad weather.
Abubager Siddique, 50, a deck hand on the Hope – who had joined the ship just three months before – was plucked from sea by a Royal Thai Navy helicopter and flown to Phuket, where he is now being treated in Vachira Phuket Hospital.
Apart from five crew members who made it to one of the ship’s lifeboats, and Mr Siddique, who was saved by the helicopter, the remaining crew members have yet to be found. (Source: UNB)
