The China Marine Rescue Center on Sunday said the captain and the sailor who kept on lookout duty on the cargo vessel, known by the code Qinfeng 128, took full responsibility for hitting a bridge under construction near the eastern seaport of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.

An official with the center said the cause of the accident, which left four crew members missing, was that the captain had chosen the wrong route and the sailor on lookout duty was negligent.

He said the major sailing route under the bridge was opened on Feb. 1 last year but the ship chose a side route and struck the lower arch. The sailor on duty misjudged the height of the bridge and failed to spot the girders below the bridge surface.

The vessel collided with part of the lower span of the Jintang Bridge in Ningbo at 1:15 a.m. on March 27, causing the collapse of a 60-meter-long section that fell onto the ship.

Sixteen of the 20 crew on board had been rescued, but rescuers were still searching for the four missing.

Officials speculated that the missing crew members might have been trapped in the cabin by the collapsed section weighing about 3,000 tons.

The ship has a designed capacity of 7,000 tons.

More than 10 salvage ships were trying to lift the collapsed part of the bridge and pull the damaged cargo ship out.

Nobody was working on the bridge at the time, and there were no passersby at the site since the bridge had not opened to traffic, according to local construction headquarters.

Maritime officials said that the ship was en route from Ningbo port to points north.

The ministry of communication and transport set up a team to investigate the cause of the accident. The local authority cordoned off the site of the accident and banned all ship movements.

Construction of the 21-kilometer bridge began in April 2006 and was set for completion in 2009, involving 7.7 billion yuan (nearly 1.1 billion U.S. dollars) in investment.

The bridge will connect Zhenhai city in Ningbo and Jintang Island in Zhoushan, spanning the Huibie area of the East China sea.

In a similar accident in June last year, nine people were killed after a cargo vessel hit a section of the 1,600-meter Jiujiang bridge in Guangdong Province, causing part of the bridge spanning the Xijiang River to collapse.

(Xinhua News Agency April 7, 2008)