Desperate relatives protest over slow ferry rescue
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 20, 2014
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A family member of the victims on a capsized ferry clashes with police. |
Desperate relatives of hundreds of passenges on a sunken South Korean ferry clashed with police on Sunday morning as the death toll from the capsized vessel keeps rising.
Police formed two lines to prevent up to 100 people who gathered on the Jindo in southwestern Korea and tried to march across a bridge to the mainland to take their protest to the capital of Seoul.
Relatives pushed and shoved the lines.
A rescue has now turned into a grim search through the stricken vessel to recover the remaining passengers, most of them schoolchildren, who are still unaccounted for after Wednesday's capsize.
"Bring me the body," said weeping mother Bae Sun-ok as she was comforted by two policemen at the bridge.
Hundreds of relatives gathered in a gymnasium in the port city of Jindo have spent four days and nights waiting for news of their loved ones on the ship.
Until Sunday afternoon, at least 56 people were confirmed dead and the death toll keeps rising as more bodies have been retrieved from underwater by search crew.
Some 174 passengers were rescued.
Koh Myung-seok, director general of the coast guard, told reporters that a total of five underwater ropes, which guide divers through rapid currents to the underwater gate of the ferry from surface, have been installed and the ropes enabled divers to go down into the sunken vessel at a much faster pace than before.
Of the 476 passengers and crew on board, 339 were either pupils or teachers from a high school in Ansan, a commuter city outside Seoul.
The deputy principal of the school, who survived from the capsized, hanged himself and was found outside the gymnasium in Jindo on Firday.
The sinking looks set to be the country's worst maritime disaster in 21 years in terms of loss of life.
The 69-year-old captain Lee Joon-Seok, along with other two crew members, was arrested on Saturday and charged with crimes relating to negligence.
Investigators said the accident came at a point where the ship had to make a turn, and prosecutor Park Jae-eok said investigators were looking at whether the third mate ordered a turn that was so sharp that it caused the vessel to list.
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