A Russian seaman has died in an accident on board a Russian nuclear submarine at a Pacific base, a navy spokesman said on Friday. The sailor, Dmitry Koval, received fatal injuries when a pipe burst, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Russian navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo as saying. Dygalo said that the submarine was docked at Vilyuchinsk base on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's far east when the accident occurred. Dygalo said the accident damaged one of the submarine's sections, but it has remained fully operable. He didn't say when the accident occurred or name the submarine.
Russia's NTV television quoted Koval's mother as saying that naval officials told her that her son was fatally injured in a gas explosion. Two other crewmen were injured, it said. Captain Andrei Berezin, a naval officer who came to Koval's native city of Krasnoyarsk to attend his burial, told NTV that Koval had "sacrificed himself to save the crew" but refused to name the submarine or give any details of the accident. Calls to the Russian navy's headquarters have gone unanswered |