MOSCOW (AP) - The sailors aboard the Kursk could not have been at fault for the explosions that destroyed the nuclear submarine last year, Russia's top prosecutor said Sunday as rescuers pulled more bodies out of the mangled vessel. (Read photo caption below) Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, in an interview on state-run RTR television, said ballistics experts were examining the Kursk to see whether it could have come in contact with an outside object.
The Kursk was lifted from the Barents Sea floor and brought to dry dock earlier this month in a costly operation the Russian government says will help determine what caused the August 2000 disaster that killed all 118 men aboard.
Most foreign experts believe a malfunction in one of the Kursk's torpedoes caused the explosions. Ustinov reiterated that Russian military experts insist the Kursk's torpedoes were flawless.
But he indicated that if there were a problem with a torpedo, it must have been technical and not a human error.
Experts pulled out six more bodies Sunday from the submarine's fifth compartment, bringing the total retrieved since the Kursk was raised to 40, the Interfax news agency cited naval officials as saying.
Lined up in identical coffins, seven of the bodies were honored at a memorial service late Saturday night in Severomorsk, the Kursk's home port. They were then flown Sunday to the cities of Kursk and Lipetsk in western Russia, Ufa in the Urals and Tomsk in Siberia, RTR state television reported.
PHOTO CAPTION:
FILE--1999 file photo shows a hatch, which is opened on the nuclear submarine Kursk hull, revealing four missile tubes capable of launching Granit cruise missiles, near Severomorsk. After the bodies 12 seamen from the Kursk are recovered, the next immediate task would be to secure the submarine's nuclear reactors and its 22 Granit cruise missiles, each containing enough explosives to sink an enemy aircraft carrier. (AP Photo/ File)