At least six people died and more than 100 others are missing after a passenger ship in Indonesia lost contact Sunday during bad weather in the Java Sea, officials said.
The Virgo Transport 8 ship, which was carrying 243 people, had set off Saturday from Surabaya, a city in East Java, the country’s search-and-rescue agency said, according to local media.
The ship lost contact around 2 a.m. local time Sunday after encountering severe weather, said I Putu Sudayana, head of the agency’s office in Banjarmasin, where the ship was headed. The ship’s last reported position was about 80 nautical miles from the Basirih Search and Rescue Pier in Banjarmasin.
A total of 103 people have been rescued so far, Sudayana said at a news conference Sunday, including one person who then died.
He said rescue workers faced waves up to about 8 feet high around the search area, adding that larger vessels and a helicopter had been deployed.
The search-and-rescue agency has about 30 ambulances on standby to help handle casualties upon arrival at the port, the government-owned news agency, Antara reported.
On board were 30 crew members, 27 workers, 59 passengers, one child, and 126 drivers and assistants, according to reports.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago and spread across more than 17,000 islands, has a long history of ferry disasters, with a high volume of traffic and boats that are sometimes overcrowded.
The post Six dead, over 100 missing after Indonesian passenger ship hits bad weather in Java Sea appeared first on Washington Post.
