Argentina’s Navy is officially refusing to speculate on the fate of the 44 crew members and have vowed to continue the search for the missing submarine in the Atlantic Ocean that disappeared eight days ago.
Family members of the missing sailors though have claimed today they have already received phone calls from Navy officials saying that all those aboard died after there was an explosion on the day it went missing.
Some families have accused the Navy of a cover up after it was forced to confirm there had been a violent explosion in the area where the vessel had gone missing, just hours after its last transmission.
Last night the Argentinian Navy confirmed the US government had picked up a “hydro-acoustic anomaly” under the sea at around 11am last Wednesday just 30 nautical miles north of the stricken submarine’s last reported position.
Argentinian Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi refused to speculate on what the noise could have been, but said ships were on their way to the site 450 miles off Argentina’s coast to investigate.
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Mr Balbi said: “We do not know the cause that produced in that place, on that date, an event of those characteristics.
“Consequently, we will continue the search, until we find concrete evidence of where the submarine and our 44 crew members are.
“We will not draw up any hypothesis about what happened until we have the conclusive evidence to affirm it.”
Luiz Tagliapietro, the father of Damian who was on the submarine, claimed a Navy official phoned him to break the news his son was dead.
Asked if the crew on board had died, Mr Tagliapietro said: “Yes, yes, yes, yes. One hundred per cent. My son’s boss confirmed that they are all dead.
“There’s no human being who survives that.
“They are all dead. I can’t talk much. They called me 15 minutes ago to tell me that it exploded.”
The wife of another man who was on board Oscar Suarez, Itati Leguizamon, said the Navy were “perverse b******s” for allowing the various families to continue to believe their loved ones could still be alive.
She said: “According to them, they only found out about the explosion now, but who is so stupid to believe that?
“They are a disgrace. They lied to us.
“According to them, they only found out about the explosion now, but who is so stupid to believe that? I´m not an expert but how come they didn’t know anything about an explosion for the last eight days?”
She said Mr Suarez had gone on another mission in the same submarine in 2014, and according to her had also got into trouble because of technical problems.
She said: “The Navy tried to cover it up. But I don’t care anymore, I’m going to tell everyone because I know my husband is dead. I have a lawyer and I know my rights.
“I’m so angry because these bastards are so perverse they have kept all the families here hoping, when they knew they had all died a week ago. They said it was just a minor problem on the submarine, and now they admit there was an explosion.
“I’m trying to keep calm because my husband always me to do that. he was always ready for death, he had commended himself to God.”
Britain’s HMS Protector is already helping the efforts, with HMS Clyde expected to reach the search area on Tuesday.
Russia’s defence ministry has sent an oceanographic research ship to the South Atlantic to help with the search for an Argentine submarine which went missing more than a week ago, reports TASS news agency.
The vessel, called Yantar (Amber), is equipped with two self-propelled deep submergence vehicles allowing it to examine underwater areas up to 6,000 metres (3.75 miles) deep.