Kursk set to surface again

The Kursk sank with the loss of 118 sailors

MOSCOW, Russia -- Salvage operators are preparing to put the barge carrying the wreck of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk into dry dock.

The 18,000-ton vessel, which sank in August 2000 during naval manoeuvres, killing its entire 118-man crew, was raised earlier this month from the bottom of the Barents Sea.

It was then towed under a giant barge to the northern Russian town of Roslyakovo but the docking of the submarine was delayed for two weeks because of safety fears over the delicate operation.

The salvage team are scheduled to hoist it into a half-submerged floating dock on Sunday which will finally bring the Kursk into daylight after 14 months under water.

Once in dry dock in Roslyakovo, outside Russia's Arctic port of Murmansk, the submarine will be examined by investigators and forensic experts.

It will be stripped of its arsenal of missiles and then sealed. Officials will also remove the remains of the crew to prevent damaging contact with the air.

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Russian Navy spokesman Vladimir Navrotsky has said officials expected to find 30 or 40 bodies, because the others on board were probably atomised by the powerful explosions that sank the submarine.

At least 23 Kursk sailors survived for several hours in the stern compartments, according to letters found when divers entered the vessel in November 2000 and recovered 12 bodies.

Afterwards the Kursk will be towed to the nearby town of Snezhnogorsk, where nuclear fuel will be extracted from its reactors and its remains fully dismantled.

Divers retrieved seven fragments of the first compartment of the nuclear submarine Kursk shortly after the wreckage was raised from the Barents Sea floor.

The first compartment, which was badly damaged when the Kursk exploded and sank, was cut off and left on the sea floor for possible lifting next summer.

Vice Admiral Mikhail Barskov told the Interfax news agency on Saturday that he was on the Mayo salvage ship when the hulk of the submarine was raised.

"We examined the place where the sub was lying, we examined what was left of the first compartment, we filmed and documented all that," Barskov said.

"The seven fragments were raised, we just didn't need to raise anything else."

He said in the state the compartment was in, it would be impossible to raise it as a whole.

"It doesn't exist," said Barskov, the official representative of the Russian Defence Ministry in charge of placing the submarine in dry dock. "There are elements, it is like an element now."

Investigators say clues to the tragedy could lie in the first compartment, which contained the torpedoes. The favoured theory is that Kursk sank after a practice torpedo exploded, causing others to detonate and rip the submarine apart.