Sheep rescue operation in Sudan. AFP photo
A large rescue operation mobilizes the city of Suakin, Sudan, where a ship is carrying more than 15 thousand sheep sank and where dozens of volunteers work to take from the sea to the surviving animals.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday, a few hours after the boat left the port of that city to transport cattle to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
It was an expedition of 15,800 sheep whose weight exceeded 507 tons. A pressure that caused the ship to tilt 45 degrees in the middle of the Red Sea and almost completely sink.
Sheep rescue in the Red Sea.
Eight Sudanese and Syrian crew members were also traveling on board, who were promptly rescued and reported no serious injuries or health consequences.
However, almost all the cattle drowned in the ocean. As they pointed out, there are more than 14 thousand dead sheep left at sea.
In this sense, as soon as it was dawn, a large rescue operation began to try to save the survivors of the tragic accident which also meant an important economic loss, of about 4 million dollarsand an environmental hazard due to the number of corpses in the water.
The sunken ship and the boats used to search for surviving animals.
With several volunteer citizens approaching the place, they lined up several boats on which the animals that survived the shipwreck embarked.
At least three people went to these, who toured the area in search of the live sheep and, once identified, loaded them. So until you complete the space above the boat and bring them back to land.
On what happened, the director of maritime control of the Sudanese Port Authority, Islam Babiker, told the press that what happened was an accident and that the capacity of the destroyed ship was not exceeded.
The sheep that could be saved. They claim that most of the cattle they were moving died in the accident.
“He sailed with a cargo suitable for the ship,” he defended. This was on its way to Saudi Arabia, a large consumer of lamb who imports these animals mainly from Sudan.
Likewise, he announced that an investigation has been opened to find out the causes of the sinking of the ship, while several versions assure that it “had technical problems and failures”. They were asked to check the chambers where the cattle are transported.
Economic losses and environmental consequences
Regarding the losses, the director of the Sudanese Committee of Meat Exporters, Khaled al Maqbool, stressed that “15 million Saudi riyals were lost, equivalent to about 4 million dollars in exchange”.
This is how they saved the cattle from the sea.
Then the director of the Sudanese Port Security Committee, Captain Mohamed Abdulhafez, referred to the environmental consequences caused by this accident.
“Now the challenge is to address the negative effects caused by the death of livestock at sea, such as the problems they pose to shipping or the environment,” he said.
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Source: Clarin