Dangerous crossing: Members of the rescue team at work. — AFP
At least 15 people were killed after a wooden boat sank off the coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, search and rescue officials said, adding that all missing passengers had been accounted for.
The boat sank with 48 people on board just after midnight on Sunday, the local office of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said in a statement.
Six people were rescued and taken to hospital for treatment, it added, and the cause of the sinking was being investigated.
Muhamad Arafah, head of the local search and rescue agency in Kendari city in Southeast Sulawesi, said in the statement that the 27 other passengers had been accounted for and all the victims had been identified.
The agency had said earlier that 19 were missing, but Arafah said the search operation had now been “declared finished and closed”.
The boat was crossing a bay between the villages of Lanto and Lagili in Central Buton regency on Muna island, said local rescue office spokesperson Wahyudin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
Survivor Marlina, 18, said the boat was “full” of passengers when it started to leak. “The boat driver said ‘it’s okay’... eventually it just capsized because water filled the boat. We just fell, there were no winds and waves.”
But Wahyudin refused to confirm local media reports the boat was overcrowded.
Indonesian media reported that villagers gathered on an overcrowded boat that capsized on its way back across the bay.
It is common in Indonesia for the actual number of passengers on a boat to differ from the manifest.
Wahyudin said passengers had previously been recorded as missing because they had “rescued themselves, and once they got on land, they went home”.
The vessel was a wooden passenger boat and not a ferry as initially reported, he said. — AFP
