Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (18526)	9/11/1998 4:26:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116761

Smile? Teenage Sailor Kills Eight, Holds Russia Sub 03:40 p.m Sep 11, 1998 Eastern By Karina Syomina MOSCOW (Reuters) - A teenage conscript sailor killed eight crewmates aboard a Russian nuclear-powered submarine Friday and was barricaded in the torpedo room threatening to blow the vessel up, officials said. Sixteen hours after a shooting spree in the early hours of the morning, Alexander Kuzminykh, 19, was still refusing to give himself up although officials played down his ability to damage the Akula-class hunter-killer sub, Russian media said. A spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB) told Interfax news agency that an anti-terrorist commando unit was ready to act after the youth's mother, flown in from St Petersburg, had failed to coax him out. ''He's determined and he has a very good grasp of how the submarine works,'' an FSB officer told Interfax. The Defense Ministry said there were no nuclear weapons aboard. The Akula class is powered by a single atomic reactor, which would normally not be in operation while the vessel was docked. A senior naval officer told Itar-Tass news agency that the sailor would find it virtually impossible to trigger an explosion without electricity, which had been cut off. The reactor was three compartments from the No.2 torpedo room. However, as a precaution, other nuclear submarines had been moved away from the hostage vessel, the officer said. In figures that conflicted with the Defense Ministry, Tass put the total death toll at nine. The ministry, in a terse statement confirming the latest in a countless series of similar incidents in Russia's underfunded armed forces, said there was no danger to the vessel itself. ''An emergency occurred on a submarine of the Northern Fleet involving the death of personnel,'' it said. Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, the head of the navy, had flown to the Skalisty base. Kuzminykh killed a sentry guarding the vessel in the middle of the night. Some reports said he used a chisel, others a hammer. After wounding an officer from another submarine he took the sentry's assault rifle and went below decks on his own. He shot dead five other conscripts and took a further two hostage before later killing them, Russian Television said. Around midday (0800 GMT), the teenager said he wanted to sleep. But he also made his threat to blow up the submarine. The submarine, of a type known as Bars (Snow Leopard) by the Russians and codenamed Akula (Shark) by NATO forces, was commissioned in 1991, RIA news agency said. The 110-metre Akula is the frontline defense submarine of the Russian navy, capable of hunting silently for weeks on end and carrying missiles and torpedoes able to destroy enemy surface ships and other submarines. Some can carry nuclear-tipped tactical weapons. The typical ship's company would be around 62, half of them officers. Although President Boris Yeltsin has promised to end conscription, the navy would typically have dozen or so draftees aboard a submarine of that size, one defense expert said. Murmansk is base for dozens of Soviet-era submarines, many of them nuclear powered, which rarely put to sea for want of fuel and even food. Neighboring Norway has complained of pollution and nuclear contamination of the Arctic Sea and an environmental group there, Bellona, expressed alarm. ''The scariest part of this is we don't know if the nuclear reactor is being maintained,'' Bellona researcher Thomas Nilsen told Reuters in Oslo. Similar incidents of havoc have become commonplace in the Russian armed forces since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communist rule deprived them of much state funding. Past shootings have been provoked by conscripts' anger at poor conditions or at endemic bullying by other servicemen. One Western defense expert in Moscow played down the significance of the latest incident for the security of Russia's extensive military arsenal. Even if a conscript had access to nuclear weapons, only senior officers had control of them. ''The Americans have had similar incidents. The potential is always there. It does not present a particular threat,'' he said. Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited