KARACHI, May 21: The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency rescued crew of a ship that sank on Monday by dropping a life raft from a plane to 11 men bobbing next to the freighter’s fast-disappearing prow.

The Sierra Leone-flagged MV Maryam Trans made a distress call that it was sinking about 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of Karachi in the Arabian Sea, said MSA spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Attiqur Rehman.

An agency aircraft scrambled to the area spotted the crew near the stricken ship, and dropped the inflatable raft, said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Salman Ali.

All 11 crew members, most of them Indians, were able to clamber in and another vessel then picked them up, Ali said.

Commodore Rehman said the ship had sunk so quickly that the sailors had no time to lower its own lifeboats.—AP