Thick smoke billows from the Singapore-flagged container ship MV X-Press Pearl that has been burning for the 6th consecutive day, in the sea off Sri Lanka’s Colombo Harbour, Tuesday, May 25.
Rescuers have evacuated all crew from a container ship off the coast of Sri Lanka as a fire on board intensified and two people were injured, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan Navy said on Tuesday.
An explosion was reported from within the vessel, Navy spokesman Indika De Silva said, adding that an air force helicopter was using dry chemical powder to douse the fire.
The MV X-Press Pearl, a container ship sailing with a Singaporean flag and carrying cosmetics and chemicals including 25 tons of nitric acid, was anchored off Colombo when a container caught fire on Friday, officials said.
The vessel had left the Hazira port in India on May 15 and was on its way to Singapore via Colombo.
Sri Lankan authorities said experts from the Netherlands and Belgium were surveying the ship, while neighbor India had promised to send vessels and an aircraft to help fight the fire.