Fourteen crewmembers of the Hera ship, which sank February with 17 Bulgarians onboard near the Bopshorus strait, have been rescued and brought back to Bulgaria alive, according to a web site launched by the sailors' relatives.

Underwater works and the official investigation showed that the ship has cracked due to a severe winter storm, which caused the shipwreck. Only five bodies were then retreated from the sunken vessel.

According to the information posted online by relatives (http://hera.fateback.com/), the fourteen missing sailors were someway rescued and shipped to Italy with the assistance of the European Commission President Romano Prodi. It states that on September 1, all survivors were flown back to Sofia citing also the number of the flight - JGZ83.

Relatives supported their claims with an unpublished satellite picture showing one of Turkish submarines spearing in full speed into the Bulgarian vessel, then sailing under Cambodian flag.

The families of missing sailors have sent a letter to the European Commission claiming that on the day of accident, February 13, a military operation was under way and there were two Turkish and a Russian submarine in the area of the Bopshorus.

They accused Bulgarian and Turkish authorities to mishandle the information and conceal the truth.

The families' appeal has received support from MEPs Monica Frassoni and Helene Flautre, who questioned the Hera ship case and the way it was handled by official authorities in a letter dated September 29 and addressed to the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.

According to the two MEPs, hours after the incident and the rescue works carried out by two Russian helicopters, a Turkish and a Greek TV channels aired footages from a Marmar Sea island where the surviving Bulgarian sailors were transported.

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