Moscow, Aug. 5 (Reuters): The Russian military raced against time today to rescue seven sailors trapped on a stranded mini-submarine 190 metres down in Russia’s Pacific waters with possibly less than 24 hours of air left.

The AS-28 mini-submarine, itself a rescue vessel, ran into trouble yesterday when its propeller got entangled in fishing nets during a military exercise off the Kamchatka peninsula.

More than 30 hours after the mini-submarine snagged on the Pacific sea floor, Russian ships had abandoned trying to cut the submarine free from a fishing net wrapped around the propeller. Officials hoped a new tactic ? trying to drag the submarine along with the net into shallower water ? would bring results.

“We are now doing all that we can to lift it all, as a whole complex. We are already working on this. We have lowered down all the tow-ropes,” said Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, commander of the Pacific fleet, on Rossiya television.

“Now our rescue ships are trying to lift and drag it towards shallower waters.”

The US and Britain were rushing deep-sea rescue vehicles to the site by air, predicting they would arrive on Kamchatka by tomorrow.

“There is enough air for 24 hours, but you should not take this too literally. It depends on the physical condition of the crew, and that is a conservative estimate,” chief naval spokesman Igor Dygalo said.

Though much smaller in scale, the accident had uncomfortable echoes of the disaster involving the Kursk nuclear submarine almost five years ago.

All 118 seamen on the Kursk died in the accident in August 2000 in the Barents Sea that occurred after explosions on board, and the Kremlin and naval command were sharply criticised by not revealing full information on the disaster.

Russia, which said it had 10 ships in the rescue effort, asked Japan as well as the US and Britain for help.

A spokesman for Japan’s defence agency said four military vessels had been sent to join the rescue operation. But he said it would take three to four days for them to reach the site of the accident.

Britain, responding to a request from the Russians, was sending a Scorpio remote-controlled underwater vehicle.

The British defence ministry said the Scorpio, which can operate to a depth of 925 metres, would be flown out from Prestwick Airport near Glasgow in Scotland and was expected to reach the site of the rescue operation in around 11 hours. A US navy spokesman said that a Super Scorpio, an unmanned deep diving submarine, would be airlifted to the scene from San Diego naval base in California. It could reach Kamchatka in 13 hours at the earliest.