Tunisia:what was the ship"xelo" doing in the Mediterranean ?
Sky world news /Tunisia/ the sinking of the very suspicious ship "Xelo" The Damietta Port Authority in Egypt has denied reports that the ship, which ran aground on April 16 off Tunisia, anchored in its port and left.
Gray areas accumulate concerning the activity and the trajectory of the vessel. But what was the ship Xelo doing in the Mediterranean? Oil spill fears are waning after the sinking of the tanker which sank on April 16 in Tunisian territorial waters, 7 kilometers from Gabès, with 750 tonnes of diesel on board. But questions are piling up about the nature of the activity of this 45-year-old ship, which was flying the flag of Equatorial Guinea.
On April 20, the public prosecutor at the court of Gabès prohibited the seven Georgian, Turkish and Azerbaijani crew members, saved from the sinking, from leaving Tunisian soil for a fortnight renewable, the time of the investigation.
The lies of the crew The day before, the Egyptian port of Damietta denied the information, announced by the crew and initially taken over by the Tunisian government, according to which the Xelo had left the Egyptian coast to make its way to Malta.
“The Damietta Port Authority announced that the aforementioned vessel was never received in port and therefore Damietta Port was not the port of departure for the sinking vessel,” it said. she posted on her Facebook page. And why was the ship off Tunisia if it was on its way to Malta? The tanker left Sfax on April 9.
Then he reappeared on April 14 a little further south, off the Gulf of Gabes, from where he sent a distress signal on April 15 and asked the Tunisian authorities to enter territorial waters to take shelter.
bad weather. On the morning of the 16th, it was taking on water and sinking rapidly.
“This ship did not want to be tracked” However, in the meantime, the records of the automatic identification system (AIS), which allows identification and location in real time, are missing, reports the information site on the economy of the sea Blue Economy.
