Eight people died, six of them Chinese nationals, in the
shipwreck of a freighter off the coast of Japan on Tuesday night, a Chinese diplomat and the Japanese coast guard said Thursday.
The “Jin Tian”, a Hong Kong-registered 6,651-tonne cargo ship, sent a distress message on Tuesday night when it was located about 110 km west of the Danjo Islands, a small remote and uninhabited archipelago in southwestern Japan, located about 150 km south of the South Korean island of Jeju.
The ship’s captain used a satellite phone Wednesday morning to inform the South Korean coast guard that he and the crew would be abandoning the ship, which was sinking. Contact was subsequently lost.
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The crew on board included 14 Chinese and eight Burmese, the Japanese coast guard said.
The Jin Tian accident occurred as a cold front hit much of Japan, with heavy snowfall in some areas and temperatures of 3 degrees Celsius.
Several ships and planes from the Japanese military and coast guards were sent to the area, as well as South Korean coast guard boats and other private ships, to participate in search and rescue operations in which 13 people were found.
The Chinese consul general in the city of Fukoka (southern Japan), Lu Guijun, told the Chinese state channel CGTN that Of the 13 people found, “eight were confirmed dead, six of whom were Chinese.”
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“Five of them – including four Chinese crew members – are out of danger,” it added.
“We express our deepest condolences to the unfortunate victims.” The Japanese coast guard later confirmed Lu’s toll, adding that the other two crew members who died were Burmese.
Nine people are still missing, the Coast Guard said. four from China and five from Burma.
In 2020, a cargo ship with 43 crew members and 6,000 cattle capsized near southwestern Japan after encountering a typhoon. Two crew members survived.
AFP
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