KARACHI, July 8: An Indian cargo ship salvaged by the Karachi Port Trust about 45 nautical miles south of the city on Thursday has been brought to the port and an operation has been launched to pump out water from it. A KPT statement on Friday said that the trust’s fire brigade staff had commenced de-flooding operation to pump out water that had entered the Orient Prosperity. It said KPT fire fighting vessel Sabil used its portable pump.

It said the sea was rough due to monsoon and water had entered the hold of the vessel, which had tilted to the left eight to nine degrees.

At the port, when efforts were made to reduce the tilt by filling the tank on the starboard side, during de-flooding, the partition bulkhead seemed to have failed.

This aggravated the situation and the ship tilted further to above 14 degrees.

The de-flooding of the ship’s holds and tanks was in progress and the leaning had reduced to about 12 degrees, it said.

It was estimated that another 300 tons of water needed to be pumped out, it said.

It said divers were carrying out inspection of the underwater hull to locate any leakage.

If de-flooding arrangements continued at the present rate, it should take four to five hours to bring the ship to upright position, subject to the condition that water was not leaking from the hull, the statement said.-—APP