S Korean trawler sinks, 22 feared dead

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Chairman of the Executive Committee of Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited Mohammad Hasan presiding over its 498th meeting in the city recently. Vice-chairman of the EC of the bank Tofazzal Hossain, directors, Managing Director Md Abdur Rahman Sarker, addition

WELLINGTON, Dec13 (agencies): A South Korean trawler sank suddenly and without warning off Antarctica Monday, killing up to 22 fishermen, with its owners saying it may have collided with an iceberg.
Rescuers said the 22 men from the No. 1 Insung had no chance to don protective gear as they scrambled to escape the trawler and were presumed dead as they had only 10 minutes' survival time in the icy waters.
The trawler went down so fast it did not even have a chance to send an SOS before plunging to the depths of the Southern Ocean, Maritime New Zealand said.
Insung Corporation spokesman Ryan Kim said the company was trying to understand what happened.
"The boat sank in about 30 minutes. We are trying hard to find the reason why it sank so quickly," he told AFP.
"We believe the vessel might have been hit by an iceberg or a strong wave, although we have yet to secure any evidence of this. We are now collecting information from the surviving crew."
Another trawler plucked 20 crew members from the sea shortly after the ship sank about 6:30am (1730 Sunday GMT) but the rest of the 42-strong crew had only minutes to live without proper immersion suits.
Five died immediately and rescuers initially hoped some of the 17 missing had reached a lifeboat.
Maritime New Zealand coordinated desperate efforts by five trawlers to search the remote area 1,000 nautical miles north of the McMurdo Antarctic base and 1,500 nautical miles from New Zealand's southern tip.
Rescue controller Dave Wilson admitted defeat late Monday, saying "it was increasingly unlikely further survivors would be found".
Maritime NZ spokesman Ross Henderson said the boat appeared to have gone down in calm conditions and did not send an SOS.
A coastguard spokesman in the southern South Korean port of Busan, where the ship is based, told AFP there were eight Koreans, eight Chinese, 11 Indonesians, 11 Vietnamese, three Filipinos and one Russian on board.