TOKYO - A 76-hour blaze aboard a Bahamas-registered car freighter grounded off an outlying Japanese island was brought under control Friday after gutting all 3,900 vehicles onboard, officials said. "Coast guard officials managed to board the ship in the morning," a regional spokesman for the Japan coast guard said. "All the vehicles appeared to have been destroyed by fire."

The 56,835-ton Hual Europe, owned by Norwegian Shipping Firm Hual A.S., ran aground October 1 in a typhoon off Izu-Oshima island in the Pacific, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Tokyo. It caught fire early Tuesday, AFP reported.

Images of the charred wreck, its hull buckled at both ends from the effects of the blaze and the sea swell, were broadcast on television.

No one was injured in the fire as the ship's 24 Filipino crewmembers were rescued shortly after it ran aground, but most of the 1,300 kiloliters (338,000 gallons) of fuel oil it was carrying leaked out, causing major damage to waters rich in lobsters and shellfish, officials said.

"The ship still carried an estimated 40 kiloliters of heavy oil when it caught fire. We presume that almost all of it has leaked out," said Kimio Hamabe, a spokesman for the Oshima Town Office.

He said the fire was extinguished at 1005 A.M.

(0105 GMT).

The freighter, bound for Jamaica from Yokohama, was carrying new and used vehicles and heavy machinery made in Japan and South Korea.

The vehicles had an estimated worth of 10 billion yen (U.S.$82.0 million), Kyodo news agency reported.

Fishermen in the island's Habu area, directly hit by the oil leak, have been unable to work since the ship ran aground.

An official at the Habu fisheries cooperative said it had yet to estimate total damage done to fishing operations.