BEIJING: Chinese rescuers recovered two bodies and the “black box” from a stricken Iranian oil tanker which has been ablaze for the past week off the east coast of China, the transport ministry said. The Sanchi, carrying 136,000 tonnes of light crude oil from Iran, has been in flames since colliding with the CF Crystal, a Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter, 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai last Saturday. It had a crew of 32 — 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis. With the latest find a total of three bodies have now been recovered. The remaining sailors are still missing. “At 0837 (0037 GMT), four rescuers equipped with masks and bottles of oxygen were placed at the deck at the back of the Sanchi with the help of a crane,” the Chinese transport ministry said in a statement. “They discovered the bodies of two sailors in a lifeboat.” A video released by the ministry shows rescuers wearing white helmets and orange jumpsuits walking on the tanker, whose grey metallic structure appears to have been devastated by fire. “After recovering the black box, the rescuers tried to reach the communal areas (….) But the temperature reached 89 degrees Celsius (192 degrees Fahrenheit) and they could not enter,” the ministry said. A total of 13 vessels — 10 Chinese, two Japanese and one South Korean — are taking part in the rescue operation, oil recovery and firefighting. An Iranian sailors’ group has criticised China’s rescue efforts, but the Chinese transport ministry said Thursday that “terrible” weather conditions and toxic gases from the burning oil were hindering operations. “The Iranian search team will soon reach the tanker,” Hadi Haghshenas, deputy director of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organisation, told the Ilna news agency on Saturday. A day earlier, he said 12 members of the elite team were still waiting in Shanghai for conditions to allow them to go to the ship. Operated by Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Company, the Panamanian-flagged ship was transporting light crude condensate to South Korea. The 21 Chinese crew members of the Crystal, which did not burst into flames, were all rescued. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has called for mobilizing resources and adopting necessary measures to immediately determine the fate of crew members of an Iranian oil tanker that is still ablaze after it collided with a Chinese cargo ship in the East China Sea last week. Rouhani held a phone call on Saturday with the Iranian Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiei, who is currently in China as the head of an ad hoc committee tasked with following up on the condition of the tanker and its crew. He said that Iran’s Foreign Ministry needed to hold more negotiations to use resources of neighboring countries and the Chinese government in order to gain immediate access to and obtain information about the tanker’s crew members. Rouhani called on Rabiei to ensure that the Iranian and Chinese rescuers were able to enter the tanker at the earliest. The Sanchi oil tanker, carrying 136,000 tonnes of condensate from Iran to South Korea, has been in flames since colliding with the CF Crystal, a Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter, 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai on January 6. Published in Daily Times, January 15th 2018.