Investigate sinking of ship, Russia exhorted

The Foreign Ministry yesterday urged Russia to explain why a Chinese vessel sank off its far-eastern port of Vladivostok, leaving seven Chinese missing.

"China has already made representations to the Russian side," the ministry's spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference.

"We hope they continue the search-and-rescue operations for the missing sailors and clarify the reason (for the incident) as soon as possible."