The crew of the Russian mini-submarine prepared for emergency resurfacing Sunday after a British Scorpio underwater vehicle was done cutting the entanglements that ensnared the vessel on the Pacific seabed.

The remote-controlled, deep-diving Scorpio vehicle completed cutting of the debris at 13:15 local time (0015 GMT) and the seven sailors onboard the submarine were told to get prepared for emergency resurfacing, Captain Alexander Kosolapov, spokesman for the Russian Pacific Fleet, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The resurfacing is expected to take place shortly and will only last a few minutes, Kosolapov said.

Meanwhile, two US Super Scorpios and rescuers are being loaded onto a ship at the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky hours after they were airlifted to the regional capital. The ship is expected to leave shortly for the site of the accident.

The Russian AS-28 mini-submarine got ensnared Thursday night by an antenna anchored to a 60-ton heavy weight, which was part of Russia's underwater coastal monitoring system, on the seabed off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

At a depth of 190 meters, the submarine was too far down to allow the crew to evacuate.

Source: Xinhua