13 Crew Members Missing ,As Cargo Ship Collides With Japanese Trawler

A Belize-registered cargo ship has sunk off the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan, after colliding with a Japanese fishing boat, leaving 13 crew members missing.

Around 10:15 p.m. Saturday (1:15 p.m. GMT), the freighter reported the collision to the Japan Coast Guard’s second regional headquarters in the city of Shiogama in the northeastern prefecture of Miyagi

The cargo ship sank shortly after the collision which occurred around 10pm Saturday, about 12km off the coast of Rokkasho

Vessel was carrying 3,000 tones of scrap metal to South Korea when it collided with a fishing boat

More than a dozen crew members of a cargo ship are missing after it collided with a fishing boat in waters off northern Japan, a coastguard official said Sunday.

The 1,989-tonne Belize-flagged cargo ship Guoxing 1 was carrying some 3,000 tonnes of iron scrap and rapidly took in water after the hit, Japan Coast Guard spokesman Tomoyuki Hanzawa said.

The collision between the Guoxing 1 and a 138-tonne Japanese fishing boat happened around 10pm Saturday and the cause was unknown, he added.

The Guoxing 1 had a crew of 14: seven Chinese, five Vietnamese and one Filipino.

One Vietnamese crew member was rescued by a nearby ship, while the 15 Japanese crew members of the fishing boat are safe.

The Chinese consulate general in Sapporo had “immediately activated the emergency response mechanism and contacted relevant Japanese departments to obtain information”, Xinhua reported

.

Japan had dispatched six aircraft, six patrol ships and dozens of rescuers to carry out rescue operations, the consulate general said.