U.S. and British navy teams assigned to help rescue seven Russians from a mini-submarine in the Pacific arrived on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula Saturday as air supplies dwindled aboard the stricken vessel, dpa reported. Two planes landed in the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky from the United States and one from Britain, each carrying a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), unmanned submersibles fitted with cutting equipment that could free the sub from a tangle of cables on the seabed. Ships were to bring the units to the accident site in a bay of the peninsula around 1130 GMT, or 0030 Sunday local time, Russian navy officials said. A rescue attempt would ensue immediately as oxygen reserves on the 13.5-metre-long AS-28 sub were expected to run out on Sunday. "We must perform this operation during the course of the day," the deputy chief of the navy staff, Vice-Admiral Vladimir Pepelayev, said in Moscow. The U.S. Super Scorpio submersibles and a similar British unit will be lowered into the water from a ship. They are equipped with sonar, two black-and-white video cameras and powerful lights, as well as cutters that can sever thick cables. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov was due to fly to the peninsula during the day to follow the developments in the Bay of Beryosovaya, some 70 kilometres south of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Meanwhile, the submersible's crew, stranded at a depth of 190 metres, was in an "adequate" condition, navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said as Russian experts prepared their own rescue bid. Explosive charges were to be detonated on the cable and heavy anchor weight that ensnared the AS-28 during a dive Thursday in a bid to raise it to a depth accessible by divers. --mor 1313 Local Time 1013 GMT
