A race against rough seas off Indonesia has ended with 102 people rescued from a stricken ferry, while one passenger was confirmed dead after the vessel ran into severe weather in the Java Sea.
The Virgo Transport 8, carrying 243 passengers and crew, lost contact with its shipping company early Sunday while sailing from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan.
Local search and rescue chief I Putu Sudayana said 103 people had been evacuated, including the passenger who died.
The rescue operation was complicated by waves reaching 2.5 metres, with Sudayana warning that conditions posed a serious risk even to the 40-metre vessel operated by Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency, known as Basarnas.
The ferry’s captain had reported that the vessel was “tilting” before contact was lost. Its last known position was in the Java Sea, about 150 kilometres from Banjarmasin.
The incident comes amid a string of recent maritime accidents in Indonesia, where ferries remain a key link between the country’s thousands of islands.
Last month, a ferry fire in the Lombok Strait killed one person and left five others missing, while 211 were rescued. In July, another ferry carrying more than 70 people sank near Selayar, south of Sulawesi.
