October 26, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 8, 1422

MOSCOW, Oct 25: Russian investigators recovered the bodies of three members of the doomed Kursk’s 118-man crew on Thursday after making their way inside the submarine for the first time since it sank 14 months ago, officials said.

“We have retrieved three bodies, but they have yet to be identified,” Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov, head of the investigation group, said in televised comments.

“We are now working around the clock, starting from four o’clock this morning. Work is going on in shifts through the night and will continue until we are sure there are no bodies left on the submarine.”

Speaking in Roslyakovo, a dock near Russia’s Arctic port of Murmansk, where the recovery operation is taking place, Ustinov said that once all bodies were recovered, the teams would proceed with “research into other areas”.

NTV television reported that the two reactors aboard the Kursk were in good condition. Interfax news agency quoted an official from the Russian navy’s Northern Fleet as saying radiation levels inside the stricken vessel were normal.

REACTOR, MISSILES UNDAMAGED: Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov, also quoted by Interfax, said the Kursk’s 22 cruise missiles, one of the security concerns overshadowing the salvage operation, were undamaged by the two explosions that ripped through the vessel’s bow on August 12, 2000.

He said operations would soon begin to remove them.

Ustinov had earlier said it would take at least a month to find and identify all the bodies, but on Thursday he said investigators had been too cautious.

“We thought everything would be worse,” Interfax quoted him as saying. He said the bodies would be easily identified by their features as well as by identification tags and notebooks.—Reuters