Russian divers raised a fourth body from the Kursk submarine early Thursday as work to recover the remains of the 118 sailors who died in the tragedy resumed despite heavy seas and gusting winds.
Navy officials said all four bodies remained in a special capsule aboard the Regalia diving platform and had not yet been brought back to shore by helicopter because of fierce winds and a heavy fog over the Barents Sea.
Local administration sources said that President Vladimir Putin was due Sunday to attend a last-rights ceremony that has been tentatively scheduled in the Northern Fleet's base in Severomorsk.
The fourth Kursk corpse was discovered overnight during a search of the eighth and ninth compartments of the crippled craft, lying 108 meters (355 feet) under the Barents Sea.
On Wednesday, Russian divers recovered the first three bodies after managing to navigate the pitch dark of the craft in their bulky suits.
Throughout the night, Norwegian divers cut an opening measuring 1.5 meters by 75 centimeters (around five feet by two feet) in the thick inner-hull of the seventh compartment.
That will enable the Russian team to re-enter the vessel once the weather settles. The Norwegian divers will not enter Kursk.
Meteorologists said wind gusts of 18 meters (59 feet) per second were measured in the area, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) off Russia's northwest coast. They predicted the weather would not settle until Saturday.
Six Norwegian and 12 Russian divers, working in relay units of three, are expecting to find a total of 20 bodies in the rear three compartments in the Kursk, said Admiral Mikhail Motsak, chief of staff of Russia's Northern Fleet.
As the recovery efforts began in earnest, two widows of officers who died aboard the Kursk, including its deputy commander, were flown to the site.
Irina Shubina and Oksana Silogava, the first relatives of the Kursk crew to visit the scene of the tragedy, cast flowers onto the sea on behalf of all the widows and mothers of the lost sailors.
They visited the control-room of the Regalia and spoke to the divers resting in decompression chambers.
"Thank you for what you are doing for us, the main thing is that you look after yourselves," the women were quoted as saying by a Northern Fleet spokesman.
The cause of the accident remains a mystery, but the submarine was sent plunging to the bottom of the Barents Sea after a massive explosion that hit its front section.
Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov said Tuesday he was "80 percent certain" that the Kursk had been sunk by a collision with another submarine.
However Western intelligence reports say that the fuel in one of Kursk's torpedoes most probably caught fire and caused a second explosion, which sank the craft, instantly killing most of the crew -- MURMANSK (AFP)
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