Tass Regrets False Rescue Report

The Tass news agency apologized Sunday for reporting that six Armenians had been saved after spending 35 days buried in the rubble of the Dec. 7 Armenian earthquake and said that its story was a mistake and delusion.

“A painstaking search conducted over the past days did not confirm the story which we would like to believe so much,” Tass correspondents Eduard Shakhnazaryan and Akop Shakkbazyan wrote. “We were the first to report this, and today we want to offer our apologies to our readers.”

Such a public apology from the official agency is highly unusual.

On Thursday, Tass distributed a report quoting Aikaz Akopyan, 50, as saying he and five other people survived five weeks in the rubble of a nine-story Leninakan apartment building by eating food stored in the cellar. The report was circulated worldwide.

But an investigation failed to find any corroboration for Akopyan’s dramatic account. It turned out that he and his sister had concocted the story so that he could be admitted to a good hospital in Yerevan.

He was reported suffering from pneumonia as a result of his “ordeal.” But a hospital internist said Akopyan had been suffering from lung and heart ailments for at least several years.