Thai navy hunts missing marines after warship sinks

Warships and helicopters scoured the choppy waters of the Gulf of Thailand on Monday (December 19) in an effort to locate 33 marines - missing after a warship sank overnight.

The Thai navy deployed three of its vessels and two helicopters to find the missing off Prachuap Khiri Khan province, south of Bangkok.

The corvette they were aboard, the HTMS Sukhothai warship suffered an engine malfunction and went down just before midnight about 20 nautical miles off the coast.

An overnight rescue mission in bad weather secured 73 of the 106 people aboard, the navy said. But the remaining 33 were forced to abandon ship.

The navy posted images on its Twitter account showing a group of personnel on an inflatable raft moving away from a ship in darkness as waves swelled around it.

It was not immediately clear how many rafts had been deployed.

The U.S.-built Sukhothai had been in use since 1987.

It was hit by strong waves on Sunday (December 18), forcing it to tilt to one side before becoming flooded with seawater, according to the navy.