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Icebreaker rescues Russian passenger ship from ice trap

The Igor Farhutdinov passenger ship with 127 people on board was stuck in the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk

MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. An icebreaker on Saturday managed to approach the Igor Farhutdinov passenger ship with 127 people on board, stuck in the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, a source in the Maritime rescue sub-center told TASS on Saturday.

"The Kapitan Khlebnikov icebreaker has reached the area, where the passenger vessel is, and is escorting it now from the ice," the source said.

The Igor Farhutdinov, an ice-class passenger ship with 127 people and 42 cargo containers on board, left the Shikotan Island of the Far Eastern Kuril archipelago late on February 5 and headed to the Sakhalin Island. However, it ran across floes of thick ice while sailing through the Nemuro Strait and was unable to continue its journey. The ship tried to navigate its way out of the ice trap on Friday, but failed.

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