MOSCOW. July 26 (Interfax-AVN) - Now that the cause of the Kursk disaster in the Barents Sea (August 12, 2000) has been determined, the investigation into the tragedy, which took 118 lives, is officially closed, Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told a news conference in Moscow on Friday.
"The disaster occurred at 11:28:26.5 Moscow time because of an blank torpedo explosion inside the fourth torpedo tube, which in turn triggered explosions in torpedo charge chambers in the submarine's bow section," he said.
The original explosion was caused by complicated physical chemistry processes inside the oxidizer vessel, Ustinov said. A second explosion that occurred at 11:30:44.5, or two minutes later, destroyed the structures and mechanisms of the submarine's first, second and third sections.
The sailors whose bodies were later extracted from the second, third, fourth and fifth sections died within dozens of seconds to a few minutes, Ustinov said.
"Experts believe that the 23 men in the ninth section died of carbon monoxide poisoning no later than eight hours after the explosions. When the disabled submarine was found, nobody inside was alive."