55 aboard China’s nuclear submarine dead, ‘caught in trap for US, allied’ ships, says UK daily

Citing 'secret UK intel report', Daily Mail says 21 Aug incident involved 22 officers, 7 officer cadets, 9 petty officers & 17 sailors aboard submarine ‘093-417’. China has denied incident.

Representational Image of a submarine | Reuters

New Delhi: As many as 55 Chinese sailors are feared dead as their nuclear submarine got caught in a trap meant for American and allied submarines in the Yellow Sea way back in August, according to a report published Tuesday in the UK’s Daily Mail.

The report, which said, “The onboard oxygen system poisoned the crew after a catastrophic failure”, came weeks after the Chinese military denied such an incident after several social media handles posted about it.

Drawing from what was described as  “secret UK report” based on defence intelligence, the Daily Mail claimed the 21 August incident involved 22 officers, seven officer cadets, nine petty officers and 17 sailors aboard the Chinese PLA Navy Submarine, ‘093-417’.

‘Our understanding is death caused by hypoxia due to a system fault on the submarine. The submarine hit a chain and anchor obstacle used by the Chinese Navy to trap US and allied submarines,” it quoted the report as saying.

China denied the incident way back on 31 August and had issued a statement to that effect. Its military spokesperson Senior Colonel Wu Qian said, “Relevant information is completely false. We hope the internet users follow authoritative information released by China’s official accounts, and do not be misled by ill-minded information”.

The Taiwan military too had then said that they could not detect any evidence of what was then reported to be a “submarine crash”.

Local media quoted Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) spokesperson Sun Li-fang as saying that military intelligence and surveillance did not detect any evidence of a Chinese submarine crash near the Taiwan strait.

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)