Ship collision UPDATE – Lifting of wreck expected to begin next week

Attempts to hoist the wreck of the sightseeing boat which collided with a large cruise ship and sank in the Danube in central Budapest are expected to begin next week, counter-terrorism force TEK, which is in charge of the recovery efforts, said on Saturday.

Recovery teams have successfully sealed all of the boat’s openings in order to prevent any bodies from falling out of the wreck while it is being lifted, TEK official Nándor Jasenszky said.

The salvage team will install the harnesses onto the wreck on Sunday, he added.

Meanwhile, Jasenszky said a German foundation that has offered to provide search dogs to help locate the remaining victims has been taken to Paks, in central Hungary, to assist the search efforts there.

On another note, the body of a woman has been recovered from the River Danube on Saturday by the town of Érd near Budapest, an official of counter-terrorism force TEK, which is in charge of the recovery efforts, said on Saturday.

The woman is presumably another victim of the ship collision on May 29, Nándor Jasenszky told news channel m1.

Should her identification confirm that she was a passenger on the sightseeing boat Hableany, the number of those still missing would be down to eight, he said.

For that matter, the Hungarian embassy in Seoul has received numerous messages from South Korean citizens expressing their gratitude for the work carried out by Hungarian authorities and the solidarity shown by the Hungarian people in connection with last week’s Danube boat collision, a foreign ministry official said on Saturday.

Multiple letters have praised the work of the Hungarian rescue teams, while many Koreans said they had been moved by the candles and memorial objects left on the bank of the Danube in memory of the victims, Tamas Menczer, state secretary for communications and international representation, said in a Facebook post.