Divers find situation grim

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, AUG. 20. British and Norwegian rescuers who joined the operation to rescue the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk on Sunday found air pockets inside the mostly flooded vessel. An ITAR-Tass report quoting undisclosed ``well-informed'' British sources said the entire submarine had been flooded. ``The situation does not fill us with hope, '' the sources told the agency.

Rear Admiral Oleg Burtsev, who was on board the Norwegian Seaway Eagle, told RTR television that the one escape hatch to which a Russian rescue craft had been trying to dock for the past several days was seriously damaged and no longer waterproof. This would mean that the rearmost ninth compartment of the Kursk submarine had been flooded.

RTR television said three Norwegian divers were trying to open the damaged outer escape hatch to an air lock leading inside the ninth compartment.

RTR said the air lock appeared to be flooded and there seemed to be a man inside, who apparently tried to escape the sunken submarine but could not open the outer hatch.

The Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Ilya Klebanov, who heads a government commission investigating the catastrophe, said the video footage taken by a Norwegian deep-water camera confirmed fears that the submarine's front was badly mangled. Russian experts estimated that one to two tons of TNT must have exploded inside the submarine, apparently the torpedoes stacked in its front section. He said the explosion appeared to have been caused by the submarine's collision with ``some underwater object,'' probably another submarine.

``Crewmen who were in the first five or six compartments must have died almost instantly,'' the Deputy Prime Minister told RTR television. ``Those who were in the three rear compartments could have stayed alive for sometime and might still be alive.''

The damaged escape hatch could make it impossible for the British mini-submarine brought to the rescue of the stricken Russian submarine to dock with it.

Mr. Klebanov pinned hopes on Norwegian divers to manually open the damaged hatch. However, the divers's bulky suits would not be allow them to penetrate inside the sunk submarine.

Russian television said that it would be extremely difficult and dangerous to reach air pockets that could possibly remain in some sections of the grounded submarine.

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