Ten American sailors are missing and five injured after the guided-missile destroyer USS John S McCain collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore.
Singaporean, Malaysian and US search and rescue teams, consisting of patrol ships, helicopters and tug boats, were deployed to the area to look for the missing crew.
The US navy said the warship had “sustained damage to her port side aft” in the collision with the Alnic MC east of the straits of Malacca and Singapore. The head of the Malaysian navy posted a photo of the US ship with damage to its hull.
The incident is the second collision involving a ship from the US navy’s 7th fleet in the Pacific in two months. Seven sailors died in June when the USS Fitzgerald and a container ship hit each other in waters off Japan.
“There are currently 10 sailors missing and five injured,” the navy said in a statement posted on the website of the commander of the US Pacific Fleet.
It said four of the injured were taken by a Singapore navy helicopter to a hospital in Singapore for “non-life threatening injuries” and the fifth injured sailor did not require further medical attention.
“Search and rescue efforts” were underway in coordination with local authorities after the incident at 5.24am local time on Monday.
The US warship was returning “under its own power” to Singapore, the navy statement said, where it had been due for a routine port visit.
The statement gave no other details about the missing crew. The incident would be investigated, it said.
The latest collision comes amid rising tension in the Asia Pacific region where North Korea appears to be close to having a nuclear strike capability and China is expanding in the South China Sea.
“Collisions like these are extremely rare and two in one summer, both from 7th Fleet based in Japan, is stunning,” said David Larter, a US navy veteran and naval warfare writer.The US navy relieved the USS Fitzgerald’s captain of his command and other sailors were punished after the navy found poor seamanship and flaws in keeping watch contributed to the June collision. An investigation into how and why the Fitzgerald collided with the other ship was not finished, but enough details were known to take those actions, the navy said.
He added it was far too early to assess what caused the McCain to collide.
“The number of breakdowns that have to occur for something like this to happen make them a rare occurrence. Sailors monitor radars round the clock, they have multiple sailors standing watch on the bridge which also has a radar, and they have at least one lookout posted at the back end of the ship to watch for exactly these kinds of situations,” he said.
The ship, which has seen service in the 2003 Iraq war, the Korean peninsula and Japan, is named after the father and grandfather of Arizona senator and former naval pilot John McCain, who were both US navy admirals. Senator McCain tweeted that he was praying for the crew.
Cindy & I are keeping America's sailors aboard the USS John S McCain in our prayers tonight - appreciate the work of search & rescue crews twitter.com/nbcnightlynews…
President Donald Trump replied “that’s too bad” in response to shouted questions about the damaged ship from reporters as he returned to the White House after a working holiday at his golf resort in New Jersey, according to pool reports.
The Fitzgerald and McCain are both ballistic missile defence (BMD) capable. These ships are seen as an increasingly vital defence against ballistic missile launches from North Korea. Unusually bellicose rhetoric from the US president and threats from Kim Jong-un this month have stoked fears of a strike.Trump later tweeted that “thoughts & prayers” were with the sailors aboard McCain.
The Alnic MC is an oil tanker that sails under the Liberian flag. It is 182m (600ft) long and has a deadweight tonnage of 50,760. None of its crew were hurt in the incident.
Ship tracking websites showed that the Alnic was currently east of Singapore. The ship’s data showed it was “ballasting”, meaning that it was not loaded full of oil for cargo. There were no reports any oil spills.
The waterways around Singapore are some of the busiest and most important on the planet, carrying around a quarter of all trade in goods and oil.
This is how crowded the waters are around Singapore where destroyer USS John S McCain collided with an oil tanker theguardian.com/us-news/2017/a…
The US Navy has set up an assistance centre for relatives of the crew. Families can call 011-81-46-816-1728 (international) or 243-1728 (DSN on base).
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
No comments:
Post a Comment