Failure to vent the fuel tanks is reported as cause of the explotion on 'Edirne' January 16. Two people are confirmed dead, and one missing. The tanker had Turkish owners and flew the flag of Sierra Leone. It was built in 1980.

TBILISI, DFWatch – The four surviving Georgian crew members from a Turkish tanker that sank off the coast of Albania will return home today.

Avto Basiladze, Koba Partenadze, Vladimer Varshanidze and Ioseb Katamadze were flown from Tirana to Istanbul yesterday and were given further medical examinations there before returning to Batumi sometime today.

One Georgian is confirmed dead; Beka Urushadze, as well as the ship’s Azerbaijani captain, Khayyam Mammadov. Another Georgian, Malkhaz Lazishvili, is still missing.

There are currently negotiations about the transfer of Urushadze’s body.

The Turkish tanker Edirne had just unloaded three thousand tons of fuel January 16 and was about to leave Durres harbor in Albania when there was a massive explotion on board.

Preliminary examinations indicate that the cause of the explotion was failure to vent the the tanks after unloading the fuel, according to Trend.az.

Fourteen people were on board, of Turkish, Azerbaijani, Ukrainian and Georgian origin.