Turkish authorities detained nine of the ten crew members aboard the oil tanker Alsu following its collision with the cargo vessel Tugberk Imamoglu, which sank off Istanbul’s Silivri district in the early hours of September 2. The Turkish-flagged cargo ship, carrying 4,200 tonnes of rolled steel sheets and reinforcing bars on a voyage from Iskenderun to Eregli on the Black Sea, went down roughly 18 nautical miles south of Silivri after colliding with the empty tanker, which was en route from Kocaeli to Aliaga on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Officials said the damaged cargo ship sank “very quickly” in waters approximately 900 meters deep, and the Alsu itself sustained no damage. Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the sinking occurred within roughly 11 minutes of the collision and that no crew had been found alive as of Thursday.
The Silivri Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a judicial investigation into the accident, treating nine of the ten people aboard the Alsu — all except the ship’s cook — as suspects while they remain aboard the tanker under gendarmerie supervision. Turkish news agency DHA reported that radio recordings indicated the Tugberk Imamoglu’s captain had warned the Alsu to steer to port shortly before the collision, a claim the tanker’s owners have not addressed publicly. Imamoglu Denizcilik, the cargo ship’s operating company, said preliminary findings pointed to the Alsu’s navigational movements as the cause. A large-scale search and rescue operation involving coast guard, navy, and disaster management units — including helicopters, drones, search vessels and an underwater survey ship — has so far recovered only a lifeboat and debris from the sunken vessel, with no sign of its ten Turkish crew members.
Source: Arab News — https://www.arabnews.com/middle-east/turkey-detains-nine-tanker-crew-after-collision-3000305
Tags: Turkey, Marmara Sea, Ship Collision, Search and Rescue
