Three crewmembers of the sunken dry cargo ship Konyust-1 were found at 8:30 p.m. Moscow time, a source at the Southern Regional Center of the Emergency Situations Ministry told Itar-Tass.
The Samur-18 crew found the sailors drifting on a raft in the Caspian Sea, the source said. The rescued sailors said that another nine crewmembers of the sunken ship were drifting on two rescue rafts. The search goes on.
The Konyust-1 registered at the port of Taganrog was en route from Astrakhan to Iran with metal onboard. It has a crew of 12. The contact with the vessel was lost on November 11. It did not arrive in Iran on November 14, and the search-and-rescue operation began on November 17.