Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed Wednesday a national day of mourning for the 118 sailors who died aboard the Kursk nuclear-powered submarine, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
The nation will remember the crew two days after all operations to rescue the submariners were called off following the discovery by Norwegian divers that the entire submarine had flooded with water.
"On the 12th of August, 2000 the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea. Its crew was killed," the Putin decree states.
Putin expressed his "sorrow for those killed and condolences to the relatives and friends."
The decree calls on Russian flags to be lowered on all state buildings Wednesday and asks television to strike entertainment programs from its schedule for the day.
He also called on the government to offer all necessary assistance to families of the stricken crew.
The Kursk tragedy is the first deep-sea drama to hit Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The troubled nine-day rescue operation in the Arctic waters left the government reeling under angry charges of isolationism and incompetence.
Putin, who went on vacation the same day that Kursk went down during a training exercise with the Northern Fleet, waited for five days before accepting Western offers of assistance in the rescue mission.
By that stage, however, it appears that all of the submariners were already dead, as the urgent calls for help transmitted by desperate survivors banging in Morse code on the hull of the vessel had stopped two days earlier.
A team of Norwegian divers on Monday managed to open the Kursk rear escape hatch only to discover that the craft was flooded.
It then called off the rescue operation. Russia is now asking for Western assistance to help raise the Kursk, an operation that is expected to take more than one month.
Meanwhile, an investigation into what caused the catastrophic accident continues.
The Russian navy now concedes that more than half the crew of Russia's most modern nuclear submarine apparently died in the first minutes of the accident - MOSCOW (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
