Four Chinese seamen died and four others are missing after a Malta-registered freighter collided with another vessel and sank off the Japanese coast early yesterday morning.

The Malta-registered ship, Wei Hang 9, carrying a crew of 21 and 5,700 tonnes of scrap metal, was heading for Dalian in China when it collided with a Japanese freighter off Chiba, east of Tokyo, at 5 a.m., the Japanese coastguard was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

The Wei Hang 9 sank while the Japanese ship, the Kaishin Maru, heading towards the Japanese northern island of Hokkaido, suffered slight damage and no casualties to its crew of four.

The 13 crew members rescued, who do not include either the master or the chief engineer, were taken on board the Japanese ship.

The Malta Maritime Authority said the accident took place in thick fog and rather adverse weather conditions with visibility below 50 metres. The accident led to an oil spill.

The search and rescue operation involving seven Japanese coastguard boats and four helicopters is still going on for the missing crew.

The Japanese coastguard said one man had been rescued by helicopter but died in hospital later.

It was the second time the Japanese ship has been involved in a collision. The ship collided with a freighter in September 2003 off Shizuoka Prefecture, causing the other vessel to sink.

The incident comes a week after two other ships collided off western Japan, killing six crew members. The Merchant Shipping Directorate of the MMA is in close contact with the Japan Search and Rescue Coordination Centre and with the managers of the Maltese ship Winland Shipping Company Limited of China.

The directorate is carrying out its own investigations into the accident with the cooperation of the High Marine Accidents Inquiry Agency of the Japanese government.

Malta's Permanent Representative to IMO, the Maritime Administration and Malta's head of delegation at the 53rd session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organisation meeting in London yesterday thanked the crew of the Japanese ship and Japan's Search and Rescue Coordination Centre for their ongoing efforts to minimise this tragedy.

The Maltese authorities expressed condolences to the families of those involved in the incident.

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