An official said on Monday that 31 people were rescued and 11 are still missing after a ferry ran out of gasoline and capsized off the coast of Indonesia.
Many of the survivors were hauled ashore by local tugboats and fishermen after the KM Ladang Pertiwi sank while travelling through the Makassar Strait in South Sulawesi province on Thursday. “Until now, 31 people have been rescued alive, and we are still looking for 11 more people who are still missing,” Djunaidi, the director of the local search and rescue team, told AFP on Monday.
“They have returned home now and they are generally in good health,” he added.
In the search for the missing, rescuers have deployed a helicopter and expanded the search area to 20 nautical miles from where the boat sank, according to Djunaidi.
The ship didn’t see an authorization to move people, he noted, and both the captain and owner have been detained. There was no official passenger manifest, which is usual in a nation where workers occasionally sell unauthorized tickets over the ships’ nominal capacity, but investigators estimate there were 42 people onboard when the ship went down. In 2018, more than 150 people died after a ferry capsized in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Island Of Sumatra.