Six people died and 130 are missing after a ferry carrying more than 240 people sank in Indonesia, the latest mass-casualty maritime accident in a country heavily dependent on sea transport, raising fresh questions about lax safety enforcement.
The search and rescue office in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan province, received a distress report from an official of the Bergo Transport 8 at about 4:10 a.m. on the 13th, according to Reuters and other outlets. The vessel was carrying 243 people, including 213 passengers and 30 crew members.
Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency said the ferry later sank. Six people were killed and 130 remain missing, while the other 107 aboard were rescued by several vessels. "Those evacuated will be taken to a port in East Java province," an official at the Banjarmasin search and rescue office said.
The Bergo Transport 8 had departed Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city in East Java province, at about 10:13 a.m. the previous day, bound for Banjarmasin. Contact was lost at about 2 a.m. after a radio message reporting deteriorating weather. Its last confirmed position was about 148 kilometers from the Basirih pier in Banjarmasin.
The National Search and Rescue Agency, working with the navy, has deployed 12 vessels to the site to look for the missing. "As soon as we received the report that contact with the ferry had been lost, we sent rescue teams to its last known position," the Banjarmasin official said. "We are focused on finding the missing."
In Indonesia, an archipelago of about 17,000 islands, ships are a main mode of transport alongside aircraft. But safety rules are often poorly enforced, passenger manifests frequently fail to match the actual number of people aboard, and accidents caused by bad weather and fires occur repeatedly.
