Rescue workers found eight more survivors and recovered eight bodies on Thursday as the search continued for people missing two days after a ferry sank in rough waters off eastern Indonesia, officials said.
”The rescue workers found 16 people from the sea, eight bodies and eight survivors,” Kupang’s navy fleet commander, First Admiral Syahrin AR, told El Shinta private radio.
The latest discoveries brought the number of survivors from Tuesday night’s accident to 121. Nine more people have been confirmed dead and eight people are thought to be still missing, Syahrin said.
Rescue workers, assisted by a helicopter and a number of boats, including three naval vessels, continued their search for the missing, who were feared drowned after nearly 48 hours floating in rough seas.
Bambang Yulianto, a navy official stationed at Kupang, the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province on the western half of Timor island, said earlier that two people and one body were found on an island nearby.
”Weather in the area continued to be unfriendly,” Yulianto said, referring to heavy rains, strong winds and waves more than 3m high. ”It was good and clear for a short time, but suddenly turned extremely bad, which hampered the search operation.”
Officials have been giving different figures for the number of people aboard the ferry, with some of them putting the number of passengers and crew members as high as 160 when it sank in heavy seas while sailing from Kupang, about 1 900km east of Jakarta, to nearby Rote island.
The manifest showed the vessel was carrying 105 people, but it is normal for Indonesian vessels to carry more passengers than are listed, officials said. Some passengers might have boarded the ship at the last minute without tickets, they said.
Syahrin said 138 people were on board.
About two hours into the planned five-hour voyage, the ferry’s captain reported to Kupang port authorities that the vessel had an engine problem and he was turning back. Radio communications with the ferry were cut off immediately afterward.
It was the latest sea accident in Indonesia, the vast archipelago nation of more than 17 000 islands, where sea transportation is much cheaper and more widely available than travel by air. — Sapa-dpa