/ 20 July 2005

Little hope of saving lost Danish divers

Chances of saving four Danish divers and their British-Canadian scuba-diving instructor are diminishing fast, four days after they went missing off Zanzibar, police and Denmark’s ambassador said on Wednesday.

A Danish woman, her two sons, an additional Dane and their instructor failed to surface at a designated spot while diving on Saturday off Misali, an island famous for its sandy beaches and great diving and snorkelling in surrounding reefs.

The area where the divers disappeared has strong underwater currents that may have dragged and trapped them into submarine caves, acting regional police chief Ameir Juma Ameir said.

The currents go as far as Mombasa, an Indian Ocean port city in neighbouring Kenya, Ameir said.

Rescuers ”haven’t found anything, but there is a quite intensive search going on, particularly on the air — on the Tanzanian and Kenyan side, using airplanes and helicopters,” Denmark’s ambassador Carsten Nilaus Pedersen said.

He was speaking from the centre of the search-and-rescue operation in Pemba, the second main island in this Indian Ocean archipelago. The operation involves volunteers, police officers and members of Zanzibar’s special unit for the prevention of smuggling.

On Sunday, rescuers found a life jacket on a sand dune that appears during low tide, and aircraft spotted two other life jackets in the ocean on Monday. — Sapa-AP