Iran’s Consul General in Shanghai Alireza Irvash said “due to the oil spill and the spread of flames up to more than a kilometer, the tanker is still burning and the fire has not been extinguished despite the fact that all the fire fighting forces and equipment and rescue teams have been marshaled.”
“We have no evidence yet whether the missing crew members on board the Iranian oil tanker are dead or not, and the search for finding the lost sailors is still under way,” Irvash added.
“Shanghai local administration and the central government in Beijing have marshaled their forces to search for the missing crew members,” he added.
An Iranian-owned oil tanker collided with a Hong Kong freighter in the East China Sea on Saturday, leaving the tanker’s 32 crew members missing, 30 of whom were Iranian sailors. The tanker and the freighter collided in waters at around 20:00, about 160 sea miles east of the Yangtze River's estuary.
China later announced that 21 crew members of the Chinese freighter, CF Crystal, which was carrying 64,000 tons of grain, have been rescued.
In August 2016, another Iranian tanker collided with a Swiss container ship in the Singapore Strait, which nonetheless resulted in no injuries or oil spill.
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