At about midday on Sunday local time, the ship “suddenly ignited”, with the vessel burning fiercely and a pall of smoke about 800-1,000 metres high, China’s transport ministry said, releasing dramatic pictures showing the tanker obscured by thick black smoke. The ship later sank, the official news agency Xinhua cited the State Oceanic Administration as saying. “There is no hope of finding survivors among the members of the crew,” Mohammad Rastad, a spokesman for the Iranian rescue team dispatched to Shanghai, told Iran’s state broadcaster in Tehran before the tanker went down. Rastad said information from members of the Crystal’s crew suggested all personnel on the Sanchi had been killed in the first hour of the accident “due to the explosion and the release of gas”.
