Towed Russian sub sinks

MOSCOW - A mothballed Russian submarine being towed to a scrap yard sank in a gale in the Barents Sea on Saturday, killing nine of the 10 crew, the defense minister said.

The accident raised concerns of environmental damage in a busy fishing area and further dented the navy's prestige three years after the submarine Kursk sank in the same area with 118 men aboard.

A howling storm ripped the pontoons off the K-159 sub as it was being towed to a plant in Polarnye, some 800 miles north of Moscow above the Arctic Circle, where it was to be dismantled.

The navy said one sailor was rescued and the bodies of two others were pulled from the 50 degree water. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said it was unlikely the seven others would rescued.

Ivanov said the commander of the submarine division that included the K-159 was suspended, and the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office said Navy officials were being charged with violating navigation rules.

"In addition to objective factors - sea waves - there were subjective one: technical standards of towing were ignored during the voyage," Ivanov said.

The hatch atop the sub's conning tower had been left open, Ivanov said. That likely hastened the sub's sinking and gave the crew little chance of survival.

The prosecutor's office said officers "didn't show enough resolution in carrying out rescue operations," the Interfax news agency reported.

The agency, citing unnamed navy officials, said a second derelict submarine was being towed in the area and apparently confused rescuers. That submarine reached port safely, Interfax said.

The two nuclear reactors of the 40-year-old K-159 were shut down when it was decommissioned in 1989. Radiation levels reportedly remained normal after it sank.

Although the navy insisted that the K-159's nuclear reactors posed no environmental hazard, environmentalists warned of a possible radiation leak that could contaminate the busy fishing area.

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