Gales causing emergency situation for ships in Black Sea

Several ships were reported as being in distress in the Black Sea on Tuesday because of severe gales.

ITAR-TASS news agency reported that a floating dock and a research ship had sunk in a gale near the Crimean port of Feodosiya.

The Ukrainian navy rescued one crew member from the vessel which is lying at a depth of six metres.

Bad weather was preventing any attempts to raise the ship, it said.

In a separate report, it said a Georgian ship had been wrecked near Feodosiya and was washed ashore after sustaining a hole in its side.

The crew of seven , who were uninjured, were rescued.

A Brazilian ship with 22 people aboard was also in distress near the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, it said.

In a separate report, Interfax news agency said three Russian ships had spent several hours searching for a Turkish ship in the Black Sea region.

The search for the ship was being hampered by storms, poor visibility and very faint SOS signals.

Unprecedented weather conditions for the region, with gusts reacing 45 metres a second and temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius have created an emergency situation, it said.

ITAR-TASS added from the Russian city of Krasnodar that four ships, including an oil and ore carrier, were being driven towards the shore in the Azov Sea.

The vessels had 52 people on board, it said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.