More Kursk bodies found as town officially grieves

MURMANSK - Divers working at the bottom of the Barents Sea have retrieved 12 bodies from the wreck of the sunken Kursk submarine, said a spokesman for Russia's Northern Fleet.

The spokesman, reached by telephone in the fleet's base in Severomorsk, said eight bodies had been pulled from the wreck in the past 24 hours.

Four were raised from the sea last week and were honoured in a ceremony in Severomorsk..

Four armored cars carried the bodies of the four unidentified sailors, raised from the Kursk by divers during the past week, to Courage Square in the center of the Northern Fleet's base.

The news that several more bodies had been brought up from the submarine, lying 330 feet down on the sea bed, deepened the drama of the memorial ceremony attended by several hundred people.

``Forgive us,'' Defense Minister Sergeyev told the mourners, ''Farewell, and let the ground beneath you be soft as down.''

Top officials addressed the crowd beneath a towering bronze World War Two monument of a marine machinegunner. A heavy snowfall gave way suddenly to thin sunlight, leaving the square blanketed in white.

``Even the great Russian language fails to provide words for the bitterness of this loss and tragedy,'' Sergeyev said.

``I think there is nobody in Russia who does not suffer this tragedy as their own,'' he said.

``It is so hard to imagine that they will never again return, never step across the threshold of their homes, and never rush to embrace their parents, their children, their wives. It was the navy's finest crew, and it remains so in our memory.''

A small child's wailing could be heard over the murmuring of the crowd as a loudspeaker blared a mournful seaman's song.

A man slowly read out the names of all 118 dead crew members.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin attended a brief service later in the day for 84 people who died last week in a plane crash in the republic of Georgia. Most of the dead were military men and their families returning to a Russian base in Georgia from holidays.

Putin held a candle alongside Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II in a wooden chapel next to the grandiose, recently completed Christ the Saviour Cathedral. The president then left for a Russia-European Union summit in Paris.

Nationwide grief and anger over the loss of the Kursk was reignited this week after the first four bodies were brought to the surface -- along with a dramatic note scrawled in the darkness and found in a pocket of one of the crew.

Lieutenant-Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov had written that 23 sailors survived the initial blasts that sank the vessel, only to die slowly in the ninth compartment in the rear of the sub.

The note overturned earlier accounts of the disaster: Russian officials, defending themselves from charges that a faster international rescue could have saved lives, had long insisted that all crew had died within minutes of the accident.

Officially none of the bodies have been identified, although the one bearing the note is presumed to be that of Kolesnikov. His family arrived shortly before midnight at the snowbound airport in Murmansk, Severomorsk's sister city.

It is not known what triggered the two blasts that sank the Kursk. Russian officials say they suspect the first blast was caused by a collision with a foreign submarine, something Western countries strongly deny.

Herald Online feature: Russian sub disaster

Russian Centre for Arms Control: OSKAR subs

World Navies Today: Russian subs

Russian Navy official website