Jianli: Rescuers on Thursday decided to lift the cruise ship capsized in China's Yangtze river using two salvage vessels and massive cranes with bleak hopes of finding any survivors among the over 350 people missing in the tragedy after just 77 bodies were found and 14 rescued alive.
Over 1,200 relatives of the missing people were brought here after protests as they restlessly waited for news about their dear ones.
Rescuers first cut three holes in the hull of the 'Eastern Star' in a last-ditch effort to find survivors over 60 hours after it sank due to a tornado on Monday night.
Over 200 divers, who searched the overturned ship since Tuesday and managed to rescue two people, finally halted their operations at 8PM (1730 IST) after through checks conducted by scanners to detect life yielded no results.
The deadline for lifting the ship was fixed as nearly 72 hours had passed and that is the accepted international deadline for finding survivors.
Till now 77 bodies have been recovered, 14 people rescued alive while more than 350 still missing in the capsize of the ship that was carrying 456 people. Two salvage ships with massive cranes were deployed for lifting the 2,200-tonne ship.
After the process of lifting the ship is complete it would be brought to its original position to enable rescue teams to search all parts of the vessel to look for survivors and pull out the remaining dead bodies.
A number of passengers were also believed to have drowned or washed away by river current.
Meanwhile, after vocal protests from the relatives of those missing in the tragedy, the government brought over 1,200 people here with special transport arrangements and housed them in nearby hotels.
Authorities have been trying to pacify angry relatives, some of whom staged a protest near the site and broke through police cordons for information. They were being closely monitored after their arrival in the area and were frustrated at not being allowed to the riverbank.
The Chinese government said rescuers would "take all possible measures" to save the injured and promised a "serious investigation".
"We will never shield mistakes and we'll absolutely not cover up (anything)," Xu Chengguang, Transport Ministry spokesman said, adding a preliminary investigation had begun.
Once all the bodies are recovered, DNA tests would be conducted and the corpses would be handed over to the relatives, officials said. As the chances for survivors were bleak, hundreds of refrigerated coffins have been kept ready.
Politically it has been testing week for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang as they deal with one of China's worst maritime disaster.
Li rushed to the site of the tragedy and supervised rescue operations. However, authorities have faced criticism due to the inability of the rescuers to find more survivors and the time taken to assemble necessary equipment.
The seven-member standing committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by Xi met today for the first time after the tragedy and took stock of the operations.
The leaders called on rescuers to "take all possible measures" to save lives from the cruise ship and demanded serious investigation into the cause of the tragedy.
A statement issued after the meeting stressed how arduous the rescue had been for local government authorities and military units to ensure that the entire ship is searched.
Meanwhile, attention has also been turned on the captain of the ship Zhang Shunwen who along with the chief engineers escaped from the sinking ship and swam to the shore amid reports that he has ignored and did not take serious notice of a severe weather warning.
The were being held at a police station though they have not yet been charged.
Zhang claimed that the ship sank in less than two minutes in a Tornado giving no time for sending out a distress signal or warning to the passengers.
A video from surveillance camera of another ship travelling on the opposite side half hour before the tragedy showed the well lit Eastern Star cruising in heavy rain and thunder storm.
Earlier, rescuers cut a 55-by-60-cm rectangular hole on the bottom of the overturned ship to give divers easier access to the hull.
The rescuers have opened three holes in the hull to reach more than 350 people who could still be trapped in the ship.
Air pockets may have formed at the bottom of the ship when it overturned quickly, said Li Qixiu, an expert with the Naval University of Engineering, which has participated in the rescue effort.
"If trapped in the air pocket, passengers could still have a chance of surviving," Li said, adding that a 65-year-old woman and a 21-year-old survivor were pulled out alive from the air pocket.
However, Li warned that oxygen at the bottom of the ship could grow thinner over time, diminishing chances of survival of those trapped, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
