A North Korean vessel has been lost in the waters off the coast of Bangaladesh.
The vessel, MV Hang Robong, collided with another ship, MV Banga Lanka, on Wednesday night near the port of Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second city. By yesterday afternoon it was reportedly three quarters submerged.
According to port official Syed Farhad Uddin Ahmad, the vessel developed a crack in its engine room following the incident, causing three of its five compartments to flood.
All 31 crew members were rescued, but the vessel was apparently carrying more than 13,000 tons of rice from Pakistan to Bangladesh, and this has been lost.
Shoumen Chakravarty, of the ship’s local agent, Fortune Shipping, told Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star yesterday afternoon, “Most parts of the ship have sunk and there is no hope now as the (Bay of Bengal) is still very choppy.”
Shoumen added that the rice could not be unloaded from the vessel because of a power failure which rendered its crane inoperable.
