Hope Fades for Bulgarian aboard Sunken Oil Rig

A picture released by the Russian Emergency Ministry on 20 December 2011 shows an unidentified survivor of the Kolskaya oil platform evacuated from the Magadan icebreaker to a helicopter in the Okhotsk Sea, Russia. EPA/BGNES

Bulgarian national Zhivko Zhekov, who was working on the sunken Russian floating oil platform "Kolskaya", is most probably among the victims of the tragic accident.

Zhekov is not among the fourteen members of the crew, who have been confirmed rescued. His body has not been found either.

Experts say that the rescue teams may fail to discover and pull out the bodies of all the victims since the platform has sunk to a depth of one kilometer.

Many of the crew members even did not manage to go out of their cabins and got drowned in them, experts say.

A day of mourning was declared in the Russian region of Murmansk Tuesday for the victims of the tragic incident with the Russian floating oil platform "Kolskaya."

The platform capsized Sunday in a storm in the Sea of Okhotsk with 67-strong crew on board when it ran into a storm while being towed.

Rescuers said 16 bodies had been found.

The chances to find survivors at this point are slim, but the rescue operation is continuing Tuesday with the icebreaker "Magadan," the tow ship "Smith Sakhalin" and the ship "Yuri Taraburov" and with the help of powerful spotlights.

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