Candles have been lit close to the Danube in memory of the victims (AFP Photo/ATTILA KISBENEDEK) |
The captain of a river cruise ship involved in a deadly collision last week with a smaller sightseeing boat in Budapest is already under investigation over another accident in April, Hungarian prosecutors said Thursday, as the toll rose to 17.
After last
week's crash, the 64-year-old Ukrainian captain of the larger Viking Sigyn ship
was arrested on suspicion of "endangering waterborne traffic resulting in
multiple deaths".
Hungarian
press reports said the same man, named as Yuriy C., was being investigated over
the collision of another Viking ship, the Idun, with a chemicals tanker near
the Dutch city of Terneuzen on April 1.
"He is
being treated as a suspect in Holland," the Metropolitan Chief
Prosecutor's Office told AFP in a statement, citing information from the EU
judicial agency Eurojust, but without confirming the incident they were referring
to.
In a
statement sent to AFP on Thursday, Viking said: "We can confirm that even
though the captain of the Viking Sigyn was onboard the Viking Idun on April 1,
he was not serving as the ship's captain at the time of the incident."
"We
are unable to comment further while the investigations of both incidents are
ongoing," the statement added.
At the time
of the April collision, the Idun had 43 crew and 137 passengers on board.
Several passengers were injured.
Dutch
authorities are still investigating the circumstances of that collision.
Hungarian
prosecutors also said Thursday that the captain was suspected of "deleting
data from his telephone after the collision" in Budapest.
The
captain's lawyers could not be reached for comment on Thursday but said in a
statement issued last Friday that he was "devastated" by the accident
and insisted that he did not make any errors.
Meanwhile
the death toll rose to 17 after the bodies of two more South Korean tourists
were identified, leaving 11 people still missing from the occupants of the
Mermaid sightseeing vessel -- nine South Koreans and two Hungarian crew
members.
The Mermaid
overturned and sank on May 29 seconds after colliding with the Viking Sigyn on
a busy stretch of the Danube river in the heart of Budapest.
Only seven
people are known to have survived the accident.
Divers have
been unable to enter the sunken boat due to the strong current in a river
swollen after weeks of rain.
A barge
carrying a crane powerful enough to lift the Mermaid arrived in Budapest
Wednesday but was to remain docked in the north of the city until the river
level subsides enough to allow it to pass under several bridges to reach the
accident scene.
Experts
said the crane was unlikely to begin the salvage operation before the weekend.
The Viking
Sigyn left Budapest with a new captain last Friday but Seoul has reportedly
asked Hungarian authorities to return the ship to Budapest for the duration of
the investigation.
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