OSLO (AFP) - Seventeen British tourists and a Russian sailor were injured, four of them seriously, when a cruise ship was hit by falling pieces of iceshelf in the Arctic, authorities said Thursday.
Discover the World, a British travel company which had passengers on board, earlier said seven people had been injured, two of them seriously, in the accident which happened late Wednesday afternoon.
The Russian-registered Aleksey Maryshev was carrying nearly 50 passengers and 19 crew when blocks of ice from the Horn glacier crashed into the water and onto the ship.
"It seems that this caused a huge wave and chunks of ice threw people on the ship against the walls," the temporary governor of the remote Svalbard island group in the Arctic Ocean, Elisabeth Bjoerge Loevold, told AFP.
All the tourists were British and almost all the crew members were from Russia, Jan Tommervold, Svalbard's deputy police chief, said by telephone.
The four seriously injured -- three tourists and a Russian crew member -- were taken to a hospital in the city of Tromsoe. The others underwent treatment at Svalbard's main town Longyearbyen.
Authorities questioned the captain and officers to determine the exact circumstances of the accident after the Aleksey Maryshev returned to the port of Longyearbyen.
Discover the World said the ship was near to an iceshelf when a part of the glacier calved off.
"We understand that some of the smaller pieces of ice and water were washed onto the ship's deck and seven passengers were injured," it said in a statement.
The company said that none of those injured had life threatening injuries and those more seriously injured were in a stable condition.
Deputy police chief Tommervold confirmed the statement.
Discover the World added in a later statement that the majority of its passengers would fly back to Britain on Saturday.
"We are still awaiting a detailed report from our ship operators which we understand will follow after the ship's captain and expedition team have been interviewed by the Governor of Svalbard," the company noted in the later statement.
The Foreign Office in London told AFP it was offering assistance via its embassy in Oslo.
The Aleksey Maryshev is operated by a Dutch crewing company, Oceanwide, which Discover the World has used for more than 20 years, a spokeswoman for the tour operator said.
The Svalbard island group is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole.
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