PARADIP: A Panama-flagged cargo ship carrying 24 crew members sank in the Bay of Bengal on Saturday, around 240 nautical miles off the Odisha coast, officials said.
The vessel, MV Ocean Winner, was carrying iron ore from Odisha to Singapore. It had left Paradip at around 10.42 pm on August 20.
Twenty of the 24 crew members were Chinese nationals, while three were from Myanmar and one was Bangladeshi, officials said.
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and Indian Navy have launched a search-and-rescue operation for the crew members. Two survivors have so far been rescued, while 22 remain missing, according to officials.
The ICG's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Sri Vijaya Puram received information from a company associated with the vessel at 11.48 am about the loss of communication with Ocean Winner and a request for search-and-rescue assistance.
The MRCC subsequently diverted MT Aisopos, a commercial vessel in the vicinity, to search for the ship or liferafts and render assistance. The vessel recovered two survivors from two liferafts at around 8 pm, the ICG said.
The Coast Guard has deployed three ships for the search operation. ICG ships Varad and Anmol have been deployed, while Vijit has been sent from Sri Vijaya Puram to augment the operation.
The ship's last port of call was Paradip and its next port of call was Singapore, the ICG said.
The vessel had earlier disappeared from tracking systems nearly two days after leaving Paradip, triggering concerns over a possible technical failure, emergency or other incident.
A senior Paradip Port Authority official had said the vessel was believed to have travelled around 290 nautical miles from Paradip and had moved beyond the port's tracking range.
The ICG had said standard procedures were being followed to determine whether the loss of the vessel's tracking signal was caused by a technical failure, disabling of its Automatic Identification System (AIS) or an emergency.
(With inputs from Amarnath Parida, PTI)
