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Oil platform adrift in North Sea Nordic storms sink Swedish ship
(about 3 hours later)
An oil platform carrying 75 people is still drifting in the North Sea a day after it broke free in stormy weather. A Swedish cargo ship has capsized and sunk in the Baltic Sea, as storms continue to batter Scandinavia.
Norwegian rescue services were planning to tie the platform to a tug boat, but have been foiled by rough seas. Helicopters lifted 13 crew members from the ship despite heavy winds, snow and 5m (16ft) waves, officials say. One crew member is still missing.
"The platform is going towards Poland, it's drifting," a Norwegian rescue official told the AFP news agency. The 155m (500ft) vessel sank between the islands of Oland and Gotland.
He said the crew was "mostly British, there are a few Norwegians and a few Portuguese", and that they were not in any danger. An oil platform carrying 75 people is still drifting off the coast of Norway. Land, sea and air transport was widely disrupted on Wednesday.
They had not been removed as the weather precluded a helicopter evacuation. The roll-on, roll-off Finnbirch was on its way from Helsinki in Finland to Aarhus in Denmark when it capsized and sank, with a crew of 10 Filipinos and four Swedes on board.
Hans Christensen at the Norwegian Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre said the Bredford Dolphin drilling rig was being tugged out of Norwegian waters towards Poland for repairs when its towing cable snapped. Ship owner, Lindholm Shipping, told the Associated Press news agency that the cause of the sinking was still unclear.
"We are hoping to reattach [the rig] late this afternoon, depending on weather conditions," Sheena Wallace, a spokeswoman for Dolphin Drilling, said earlier on Wednesday. "We don't have enough information about what could have happened," he said.
"The tow vessel is close to the rig and we have sent a second vessel as a precaution, which should arrive in the early evening," she told AFP. Widespread chaos
Officials said the rig - reportedly owned by Norwegian oil group Fred Olsen, and operated by Britain's Peak Well Management - would hopefully be brought back under control when heavy waters subsided. The crew members were flown to a hospital in Kalmar on the Swedish mainland, suffering from hypothermia.
Earlier, officials reported the ship was on its side and the crew were sitting on the hull.
It was not clear if any of the 260 tons of oil aboard the ship had leaked out, Swedish news agency TT said.
Northern Europe experienced heavy snowfalls, high winds and freezing temperatures on Wednesday.
Land, air and sea transport services were disrupted across Scandinavia.
In southern and central Sweden, power cuts affected some 50,000 people.
On Tuesday, an oil rig broke away from a tow ship in the North sea during stormy weather.
Norwegian rescue services had been planning to tie the rig to a tug boat, but were foiled by rough seas.