Rescue workers on Sunday managed to pull out 39 people and three dead from a passenger boat that had gone missing off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island the day before, AP reported. They continue to battle bad weather to locate the scores of others still missing.
Earlier in the day, four people were found alive in the sea wearing life jackets, an Indonesian rescue official said. Another 21 people were later pulled out by a boat from the same company that ran the passenger vessel, but two of them were dead. The vessel, which was sailing from Kolaka in Southeast Sulawesi to Siwa in South Sulawesi, sank hours after it went off the radar in a storm in South Sulawesi’s Bone Strait. There had been at least 108 passengers and 10 crew members aboard.
At 3.45 pm Central Indonesian Time, the head of Kolaka port administration had received a phone call from the vessel’s crew saying they had met with an accident because of high waves, said Julius Adravida Barata, a spokesperson for the Indonesian Transportation Ministry. The boat is said to have encountered waves more than 10 feet high. Barata added that the choppy waters had forced them to be extra careful in their ongoing search and rescue operations. Six rescue boats and ships were sent from Kendari and Makassar after they received the distress call from the crew.
According to Commissioner Frans Barung Mangera from the South and West Sulawesi provincial police chapter, the body of the ship had been severely damaged after being hit by strong waves. “Water flooded into the ship after the engine was broken apart,” Mangera was quoted by local media as saying.
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