At least four people have died and dozens are unaccounted for after a ferry sank on its way to the resort island of Bali in Indonesia. Twenty-three survivors had been rescued from the water so far, local authorities said.
Rescuers were racing to find 38 missing people in rough seas after the vessel with 65 on board sank before midnight on Wednesday as it sailed to the popular holiday destination from Indonesia's main island Java.
“Twenty-three rescued, four dead,” Rama Samtama Putra, police chief of Banyuwangi in East Java, from where the boat departed, told AFP.
President Prabowo Subianto, who was on a trip to Saudi Arabia, ordered an immediate emergency response, cabinet secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said on Thursday. The cause of the accident was “bad weather”, he added.
The KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya sank almost 30 minutes after leaving East Java province's Banyuwangi port, the country's search and rescue agency said on Thursday.
The boat was carrying 53 passengers and 12 crew members, as well as 22 vehicles, the agency said.
There has been no official word on the nationalities of the passengers, but a manifest broadcast by news channel MetroTV indicated there were no foreigners on board.
Ferries are a popular mode of transport in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and accidents are common as poor safety standards often allow vessels to be overloaded without adequate life-saving equipment.
The ferry from Java to Bali takes about an hour and is often used by people crossing between the islands by car.
In March, a boat carrying 16 people capsized in rough waters off Bali, killing an Australian woman and injuring at least one other person.
