Attempts to find five workers missing in an underwater tunnel at a refinery in western Japan were suspended on Tuesday due to poor visibility that posed a risk to rescue divers, police said.
Live TV showed divers in debris-filled water as emergency services waited at the top of the 30 meter wide entrance to the tunnel at Mizushima oil refinery in Okayama prefecture after the men, aged 38 to 61, went missing when it flooded with seawater.
One worker escaped from the tunnel, said a spokesman for operator JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, Japan's biggest refiner.
"Debris and oil were floating all over. There was no visibility at all," an Okayama police official said. "There was a risk of divers being involved in a secondary accident." (Reuters)
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