October 29: Russians bid farewell at last to the 118 sailors lost aboard the submarine Kursk on Sunday, uniting again in sorrow more than two months after the vessel sank in the Arctic Barents Sea. The navy said divers working at the site of the wreck had pulled out several more bodies on Sunday morning. The news deepened the drama of a memorial ceremony broadcast nationwide, where the entire crew was represented by the bodies of four unidentified sailors raised from the depths earlier this week."Forgive us," Defence Minister Sergeyev said, "Farewell, and let the ground beneath you be soft as down." Four armoured cars carried bodies of four sailors, raised this week from the bottom of the sea, to Courage Square in the centre of the Northern Fleet's base of Severomorsk."Even the great Russian language fails to provide words for the bitterness of this loss and tragedy," Sergeyev told the mourners. "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 threshhold 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 sound of the crowd as a loudspeaker blared a mournful seaman's song. A male voice slowly read out 118 dead men's names.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 had survived the initial blasts that sank the sub, 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 Kolesnikov's.His family arrived shortly before midnight at the snowbound airport in Murmansk, Severomorsk's sister city. Russian news agencies quoted Northern Fleet spokesman Vladimir Navrotsky as saying several more bodies from compartment nine were brought out on Sunday through a hole cut in the adjacent section. He did not say how many.The divers are also trying to cut a new hole in the hull to gain direct access to the ninth compartment, seen as less dangerous than entering through the adjacent compartment. The Northern Fleet's commander, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, said on Friday he did not think the divers would be able to recover all 23 bodies from compartment nine. Entering compartments further forward, damaged by the blast, is considered even more perilous, as jagged metal fragments could puncture the divers' deep-sea survival suits. What triggered the two blasts that sank the Kursk is not known. Russian officials say they suspect the first blast was caused by a collision with a foreign submarine, something Western countries strongly deny.
