Kasargod, Jul 28: The source of the gas tankers and other consumer durables that had been washed ashore on various beaches of the district in the past few days has been finally traced.
Officials have confirmed that these goods were wreckage from the sunken cargo ship MV Mol Comfort. The ill-fated vessel sank last month in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Oman while going to Singapore from Jeddah.
Personnel from Protection and Indemnity Club, the ship's insurers, examined the gas tankers that beached at Berike, near Kumbla, on Tuesday, and in Kottikulam and Mogral-Puthur on Thursday, and confirmed that they were the cargo of the ship, District Collector P.S. Muhammed Sagir said.
The officials, who came from Mumbai, said the gas in the tankers was neither toxic nor inflammable, and was used for refrigeration.
They were compiling the list of objects that drifted towards the coast and were making arrangements to shift the debris out of the district, the Collector said.
The objects, now under the custody of the district administration, would be handed over once the ownership of the wreckage was confirmed.
The 316-metre-long MV Mol Comfort, ferrying 4,500 containers, broke apart while sailing to Jeddah from Singapore on June 17. Efforts to tow it ashore failed, and it sank later. All the 26 crew members had been rescued.
Immediately after the shipwreck, there were unconfirmed reports that the vessel was carrying huge quantity of weapons from the US for Free Syrian Army, the Syrian rebels.
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