Russian navy chiefs said Saturday all the 118 crew onboard the doomed submarine Kursk may already be dead even as Anglo-Norwegian rescuers poised for a last-ditch effort to save lives.
In a dramatic television broadcast just hours before the arrival of international help, the head of the Northern Fleet's navy command Mikhail Motsak said water flooding into the Kursk had probably finished off the crew.
"We will very likely see our worst fears confirmed," the vice-admiral said in a somber address to the nation on RTR public television, a blue-red-and-white Russian flag behind him.
Motsak said that part of the 118 crew in the forward section of the submarine had "very likely died instantly" at the time of the blast which struck the craft last weekend, ripping it apart from the front.
According to some military sources, up to 70 percent of the crew could have been in the part of the submarine devastated by the explosion, which struck the craft after it had plunged to the seabed in unexplained circumstances.
The vice-admiral added that the SOS signals from surviving members of the crew indicated that the craft flooded after the catastrophe on Saturday last week.
"The crew which was in the rear (after the accident) was banging against the hull of the submarine, to signal that the hull was no longer airtight, that water was entering and they were asking for oxygen," he said.
In a startling new hypothesis, Motsak said it was possible that a sailor trying to escape from the submarine -- against orders -- had sealed his comrades' fate by disabling the submarine's air-pressure system.
"We are proceeding to the second phase of the rescue operations, to get inside the submarine and find the survivors or dead," added the top naval chief.
An Anglo-Norwegian rescue team with a high-tech mini-submersible arrived late Saturday within sight of the area in which the stricken Russian nuclear submarine sank, Britain's defense ministry said.
The team hoped to begin its rescue operation within a few hours of its arrival in a last minute effort to save any surviving members of the crew trapped aboard in the complete darkness and cold with dwindling oxygen supplies since August 12.
A Russian military delegation boarded the Norwegian vessel Normand Pioneer Saturday for an initial meeting with British rescuers, as the ship headed towards the site in the Barents Sea where the Kursk sank.
But Russian officials warned that the last-ditch rescue bid was unlikely to perform any better than Russia's failed four-day emergency operation despite improved weather conditions.
The Russian leader has faced a national outcry over his apparent insensitivity to the fate of the sailors, denounced for not returning from holiday in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi to personally take charge of the crisis.
Motsak said it was still unclear what had provoked the explosion which sent the nuclear submarine to the seabed a week ago, but he outlined the possible scenarios: most likely either a collision or an explosion with a World War II mine -- MURMANSK, Russia (AFP)
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