Heartbreaking text message exchanges between students trapped in the sinking ferry off the coast of South Korea and their anxious parents are offering a glimpse into the desperate situation in the crippled vessel.

"Dad, don't worry. I've got a life vest on and we're huddled together," one 18-year-old student, identified only by her last name, Shin, texted her father, according to MBC News, a Korean news station.

The father replied: "I know the rescue is underway but make your way out if you can."

"Dad, I can't walk out," she replied. "The corridor is full of kids, and it's too tilted."

The student was among the 290 still reported missing.

In another exchange, a male student texted his mother, who was unaware at the time that the ferry was in distress.

"Mom, I might not be able to tell you in person. I love you," the student texted, according to MBC.

"Me too, son. I love you," the mother texted back, followed with three heart symbols.

Fortunately, that student was among the 179 people who have been rescued, MBC reported.

And one family said they had received a text message saying “I am alive” from one of the missing people while still on board, Korean news agency NEWSIS reported. It was unclear if that person had been rescued.

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Relatives of missing people wait at a Jindo port on April 16, 2014 in Jindo-gun, South Korea. (Photo …

Survivors told harrowing tales of confusion and desperation as people slid along the floor of the sharply listing ship, colliding with one another, or found themselves trapped in cabins by a wall of water.

Rescued passengers said that immediately after they heard a booming noise, the ship began listing and they heard an announcement over the ship’s PA system telling the passengers to stay in place.

“The baggage was falling out, and we were saying ‘What’s going on?’ But the announcement told us to stay where we were, so we did,” one rescued student told MBC.

Read More: Nearly 300 Missing After Ferry Sinks off South Korea's Coast

"The ship began tilting all of a sudden, and then people started skidding down from above," rescued passenger Young-Ja Shin told SBS News. "There was a railing, so I held onto it, but I then got hit by one of the falling people and we got pushed down to the bottom."

"It took about 10 seconds to tilt over, and then I began sliding from end to end," rescued passenger Eun-Bok Jang, 50, told SBS News. "I got hit on my side and then I couldn't breathe."

The vessel tipped over completely on its side, and there was mass confusion inside the ferry as refrigerators and other things fell over, Jang said.

When the water started rushing in, many passengers put on life vests and escaped outside. But by the time that announcements told passengers to make their way out, the ship had already submerged significantly, so there were few exits that could be used for escape, rescued passengers said.

Many passengers were gathered in the entertainment center, restaurants and shops on the third floor of the 5-deck ship, but when the ferry capsized, that third floor was fully submerged, authorities told the Yonhap news agency. There was most likely a power outage immediately after the ship capsized, so confused and frantic passengers probably had a hard time finding their way out in the dark and narrow passage ways.

"When we were making our way out, the wall was almost all water, and it was completely submerged up to the third floor," survivor In-Hwan Kang, 58, told MBC.

So-Hyun Kim, a teacher accompanying the more than 300 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, said she initially stayed in her cabin because of the announcements, but had to attempt an escape when water came rushing in.

"I couldn't go anywhere. I didn't have the strength to climb further up," she told SBS News. "There was an open emergency exit, so another teacher and I decided to just fall and swim our way toward it. I fell and hit a railing, and that's when I was rescued."

Of the 475 passengers on board the ferry, 179 were rescued. Another 290 were listed as missing.

Rescuers were seen boarding the vessel, which had tipped to its side, and combing through the top of the ship for survivors. One man boarded the boat and quickly found what appeared to be a crew member still on it.

Bodies could be seen scattered through the water in another video shot from a helicopter. A yellow raft was tossed out of the chopper and survivors in the water swam toward it before they were pulled to safety.

Others were winched in slings to the safety of hovering helicopters.

As darkness fell, the ferry took on more water and only the rudder of the vessel remained visible before the ship sank about 100 feet below the water. Rescuers stopped searching for those still reported missing at about 7 p.m. due to strong currents and poor visibility, but they resumed their mission around 12:30 a.m. local time, taking advantage of a lull in the strong currents.

One rescued passenger said he believed that many people had been trapped inside the ferry when it sank.

The ferry, identified as the Sewol, was sailing to the southern island of Jeju when it sent a distress call as it began leaning to one side. The passengers include more than 300 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, near Seoul, who were on a school trip.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Three pro-Russian militants died and 13 were wounded when Ukrainian troops repelled an attack on a National Guard base in the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Ukraine's interior ministry said Thursday.

A crowd of around 300 men armed with stun grenades and Molotov cocktails attacked the base, in the south-east part of the country late Wednesday, the interior ministry said in a statement. Servicemen inside fired warning shots but the attackers did not stop the assault and the army had to respond, it said.

There were no casualties among the Ukrainian servicemen, the ministry said, and 63 attackers were detained.

Speaking at the parliament Thursday morning, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said the pro-Russian gang attempted to storm the base three times and carried automatic weapons.

Footage from outside the base on Thursday night showed an unidentified man who acted as an intermediary coming out of the building to the crowd and speaking to masked men armed with assault rifles. He told them the military asked for 10 minutes to think over an unspecified ultimatum and the masked men said they did not want any bloodshed.

Several minutes afterwards, the crowd, mainly made of masked men young armed with bats and sticks, started throwing Molotov cocktails at the base's gate and trucks parked in front of it. Sounds of gunfire were heard in response.

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A Ukrainian soldier is seen in a tank of the Ukrainian Army, as they are blocked by people on their …

The skirmishes come after the Ukrainian government announced an operation to retake control of Slovyansk and other cities in the restive east.

A well-armed, Russia-backed insurgency has sowed chaos in eastern Ukraine in the past weeks. Militants have taken control of police stations and administrative buildings in at least 10 towns in the region, including Mariupol near the Russian border.

With tens of thousands of Russian troops deployed along the border with Ukraine, there are fears the Kremlin might use the instability in the predominantly Russian-speaking region as a pretext for seizing more territory beyond its annexation of Crimea last month.

On Wednesday, throngs of residents in the eastern city of Kramatorsk encircled a column of Ukrainian armored vehicles carrying several dozen troops. Soon after, masked gunmen in combat gear reached the site. Without offering resistance, the Ukrainian soldiers surrendered the vehicles to the militiamen. On the outskirts of Kramatorsk, troops at 14 Ukrainian armored vehicles were surrounded by a crowd of local residents. To end the standoff, Ukrainian servicemen handed over the magazines from their assault rifles to pro-Russian militia and left.

Turchynov told the parliament on Thursday the brigade that laid down its arms will be disbanded and its members will face trial.

The latest unrest came as diplomats from Ukraine, the U.S., the European Union and Russia prepared to meet Thursday for the first time over the burgeoning crisis that threatens to roil the new government in Kiev. With Ukraine struggling to contain the pro-Russian uprising, the Obama administration has said it is readying additional sanctions against Moscow and a boost in aid for the Ukrainian military in the coming days.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Thursday dismissed claims that Russian special forces are fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine as "nonsense," but expressed hope for success of four-way talks on settling the crisis.

Speaking in a televised call-in show with the nation, Putin said that people in eastern Ukraine have risen against the authorities in Kiev who ignored their rights and legitimate demands.

A wave of protests, which Ukraine and the West said was organized by Russia and involved Russian special forces, have swept eastern Ukraine over the past weeks, with gunmen seizing government offices and police stations in at least 10 cities.

"It's all nonsense, there are no special units, special forces or instructors there," Putin said.

At the same time, he recognized for the first time that soldiers in unmarked uniforms who have swept Ukraine's Black Sea region of Crimea laying the ground for its annexation by Moscow last month were Russian troops.

Putin, who previously said the troops were local self-defense forces, said the Russian soldiers presence was necessary to protect the local population and ensure holding a referendum, in which an overwhelming majority of its residents voted for seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia.

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El presidente ruso Vladimir Putin en la junta de administradores de la Sociedad Geográfica Rusa en u …

Putin insisted that protests in the east of Ukraine only involve locals. He said that he told his Western counterparts that only local residents are involved in the protests in the east, and "they have nowhere else to go, they are masters of their land."

Putin denounced the Ukrainian authorities' decision to use the military to uproot the protests in the east as a "grave crime."

He voiced hope for the success of Thursday's talks in Geneva that brought together the United States, the European Union, Russia and Ukraine for the first time since the Ukrainian crisis erupted.

"I think the start of today's talks is very important, as it's very important now to think together about how to overcome this situation and offer a real dialogue to the people," Putin said.

Russia has demanded that the new government in Kiev, which replaced the ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych who fled to Russia following months of protests over his decision to spike a pact with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia, move to transform the country into a loose federation. Ukraine has rejected the demand, but promised to give the regions more powers.

Putin: No Russian forces in east Ukraine

Vladimir Putin says claims that Russian special forces are fomenting unrest in Ukraine are"nonsense."
Admits troops were in Crimea

Putin fields question from U.S. fugitive Snowden

By Steve Gutterman and Alessandra Prentice

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Edward Snowden, the fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor who leaked details of U.S. intelligence eavesdropping, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin a question on Thursday during a televised call-in show.

The exchange was the first known direct contact between Putin and Snowden since Russia granted the American asylum last summer after he disclosed widespread monitoring of telephone and internet data by the United States and fled the country.

Snowden, who has been given refuge in Russia, was not in the studio where Putin was speaking. He submitted his question in a video clip, and it was not immediately clear if he was speaking live or if it had been recorded earlier.

Snowden, wearing a jacket and open-collar shirt and speaking before a dark background, asked Putin: "Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?"

He also asked whether Putin believes improving the effectiveness of investigations justifies "placing societies .. under surveillance".

He was speaking in English, and Putin had to ask the anchor for help with a translation of the question.

Putin, a former spy during Soviet rule, raised a laugh among the studio audience when he said: "You are an ex-agent. I used to have ties to intelligence."

Turning to Snowden's question, Putin said Russia regulates communications as part of criminal investigations, but "on a massive scale, on an uncontrolled scale we certainly do not allow this and I hope we will never allow it."

He said the Russian authorities need consent from a court to conduct such surveillance on a specific individual "and for this reason there is no (surveillance) of a mass character here and cannot be in accordance with the law".

The televised exchange allowed Putin to portray Russia as less intrusive in the lives of its citizens than the United States and enabled Snowden to suggest that he is concerned about surveillance practices not only in the United Sates but in other countries, including the one that is sheltering him.

Putin's refusal to hand Snowden over to the United States, where he is wanted on espionage charges, added to strained ties between Russia and the United States that have now been even more badly damaged by turmoil in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Snowden was granted asylum for at least a year.

(Reporting by Alexei Anishchuk; Additional reporting by Polina Devitt, Andrey Kuzmin, Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Steve Gutterman)

MOKPO, South Korea (AP) — An immediate evacuation order was not issued for the ferry that sank off South Korea's southern coast, likely with scores of people trapped inside, because officers on the bridge were trying to stabilize the vessel after it started to list amid confusion and chaos, a crew member said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the coast guard said it was investigating whether the ferry's captain was one of the first ones off the sinking ship.

The first instructions from the captain were for the passengers to put on life jackets and stay put, and it was not until about 30 minutes later that he ordered an evacuation, Oh Yong-seok, a 58-year-old crew member, told The Associated Press. But Oh said he wasn't sure if the captain's order, given to crew members, was actually relayed to passengers on the public address system.

Several survivors also told the AP that they never heard any evacuation order.

The loss of that precious time may have deprived many passengers of the opportunity to escape as the Sewol sank Wednesday, not far from the southern city of Mokpo.

Twenty people, including a female crew member, at least five students and two teachers, were confirmed dead by coast guard officials Thursday night. But the toll was expected to jump amid fears that more than 270 missing passengers — many high school students — were dead. Coast guard officials put the number of survivors Thursday at 179.

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A woman offers prayer with candlelight for the missing passengers of a sunken ferry at Danwon High S …

Video obtained by AP that was shot by a survivor, truck driver Kim Dong-soo, shows the vessel listing severely as people in life jackets cling to the side of the ship to keep from sliding. A loudspeaker announcement can be heard telling passengers to stay in their quarters.

The increasingly anxious search for the missing was hampered all day Thursday by strong, dangerous currents, rain and bad visibility. Officials said divers would continue trying overnight to enter the ship, hoping for gentler currents.

There were 475 people aboard, including 325 students on a school trip to the tourist island of Jeju in the south of the country. The ferry had traveled overnight from Incheon on the northwestern coast of South Korea and was three hours short of its destination when it began to list. The cause is not yet known.

The 146-meter (480-foot) Sewol now sits — with just part of its keel visible — in waters off Mokpo, about 470 kilometers (290 miles) from Seoul.

Oh, a helmsman on the ferry with 10 years' shipping experience, said that when the crew gathered on the bridge and sent a distress call the ship was already listing more than 5 degrees, the critical angle at which the ship can be brought back to even keel.

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Map path of ferry, location of ship sinking and a diagram the vessel, South Korea.; 2c x 8 inches; 9 …

At about that time, a third mate reported that the ship could not be righted, and the captain ordered another attempt, which also failed, Oh said. A crew member then tried to reach a lifeboat but tripped because the vessel was tilting, prompting the first mate to suggest to the captain that everyone should evacuate, Oh said.

The captain agreed and ordered an evacuation, but Oh said that amid the confusion and chaos on the bridge he does not recall the message being conveyed on the public address system.

By then it was impossible for crew members to move to passengers' rooms to help them because the ship was tilted at an impossibly acute angle, he said. The delay in evacuation also likely prevented lifeboats from being deployed.

"We couldn't even move one step. The slope was too big," said Oh, who escaped with about a dozen others, including the captain.

At a briefing, Kim Soo-hyun, a senior coast guard official, told reporters that officials were investigating whether the captain got on the first rescue boat, but didn't elaborate.

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Lee Joon-seok, the captain of a sunken ferry in the water off the southern coast arrives to be inves …

Passenger Koo Bon-hee, 36, told the AP that many people were trapped inside by windows that were too hard to break. He wanted to escape earlier but didn't because of the announcement that said passengers should stay put.

"The rescue wasn't done well. We were wearing life jackets. We had time," Koo, who was on a business trip to Jeju with a co-worker, said from a hospital bed in Mokpo where he was treated for minor injuries. "If people had jumped into the water ... they could have been rescued. But we were told not to go out."

It is not clear if the captain's actions violated any procedures, and he may have believed at the time that it was still possible to control the vessel, which would have made the order to evacuate unnecessary.

Worried and angry parents of the students gathered at Danwon High School in Ansan, which is near Seoul, while other relatives assembled on Jindo, an island near where the ferry slipped beneath the surface, leaving only the blue-tipped, forward edge of its keel visible.

In Mokpo, relatives of the dead students wailed and sobbed as ambulances drove away with the bodies, headed to Ansan. The families, who spent a mostly sleepless night at the Mokpo hospital, followed the ambulances in their cars. At the school, some desperate relatives lashed out in frustration, screaming threats at journalists. On Jindo island, one woman passed out and was carried to an ambulance.

Captain of Sunken South Korean Ferry ApologizesPlay Video

The family of one of the dead, 24-year-old teacher Choi Hye-jung, spoke about a young woman who loved to boast of how her students would come to her office and give her hugs.

"She was very active and wanted to be a good leader," her father, Choi Jae-kyu, 53, said at Mokpo Jung-Ang Hospital while waiting for the arrival of his daughter's body. Choi's mother, sitting on a bench at the hospital, sobbed quietly with her head on her knee.

While more than 400 rescuers searched nearby waters, coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in said that in the next two days, three vessels with cranes onboard would arrive to help with the rescue and salvage the ship. Divers were working in shifts in an attempt to get inside the vessel, he said, but strong currents wouldn't allow them to enter.

Kim said that divers planned to pump oxygen into the ship to help any survivors, but first they had to get inside.

The water temperature in the area was about 12 degrees Celsius (54 Fahrenheit), cold enough to cause signs of hypothermia after about 90 minutes of exposure, officials said. The ocean was 37 meters (121 feet) deep in the area.

Kim said coast guard officials were questioning the captain, but declined to provide details or speculate on the cause of sinking.

"I am really sorry and deeply ashamed," a man identified by broadcaster YTN and Yonhap news agency as the captain, 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok, said in brief comments shown on TV, his face hidden beneath a gray hoodie. "I don't know what to say."

Kim Han-sik, president of Chonghaejin Marine Co., the ship's owner, also apologized separately, bowing deeply and saying, "I committed a sin punishable by death. ... I am at a loss for words. I am sorry. I am sorry."

The last major ferry disaster in South Korea was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

___

Klug reported from Seoul. Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Ansan and Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report.

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Ferry evacuation order came too late

The crew of the South Korean ferry that sank didn't issue an immediate order to abandon ship.
'Told not to go out'