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Eleven Kursk victims buried

Naval colleagues lowered the coffins into the ground

About 1,000 weeping mourners filed past their coffins, heaped with wreaths and surrounded by a full honour guard, as they stood in the St Petersburg Naval Institute, where the funeral was held.

The sailors were then buried at the Serafimov Cemetery - where two men, whose bodies were recovered earlier from the wreck, also lie.

The vessel blew up and sank 15 months ago, in circumstances that are still unclear, killing all 118 men on board.

The 11 bodies were some of those recovered since the wreckage of the Kursk was raised and brought to shore last month.

A further 19 bodies are to be buried in St Petersburg at a later date although 49 crew members are still unaccounted for.

Whispered goodbye

As snow fell on the Russian naval flags draped over each of the coffins, relatives and colleagues of the men gathered at the cemetery to pay their last respects.

Marina Mityayev, the mother of Alexei Mityayev, touched her forehead to his coffin and appeared to whisper something.

Her husband Vladimir Mityayev said that when he had finally been able to identify the body of his son, "my wife and I both felt that the weight which had hung on our souls for a year fell right off".

Fifteen-year-old Sergei Isayenko paid tribute to his father, Vasiliy, by wearing the uniform of the naval college which he entered this year.

Then naval officers in heavy winter uniforms lowered the coffins into the graves as a gun salute was fired.

Missing bodies

The relatives of those buried were joined by the families of some of the 49 sailors still unaccounted for.

"You know, they had to raise that boat," said Yelena Gryaznikh, whose midshipman husband Sergei is among those still listed as missing.

"Sergei once told me, if anything happens, I don't want to be left on the bottom of the sea," she added.

Click here to see a graphic of the inside of the Kursk

Sergei Gryaznikh worked in the second compartment of the submarine, where damage from explosions in the front compartment's torpedo bay was so great that investigators were only able to recover body fragments.

The accident on one of the navy's most advanced vessels shocked Russia and led to wide-ranging questioning of the government's seemingly slow response.

The wreck was brought to the surface on 8 October in the culmination of a $65m, three-month long operation to fulfil President Vladimir Putin's pledge to bereaved relatives to give the submariners a proper burial.

The submarine is now docked in an Arctic port, being studied by investigators hoping to establish the cause of the accident.

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