About 80 people were still missing yesterday after a ferry sank in rough seas off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
The Indonesian Ministry of Transportation has confirmed three people, including two children, have been found dead, while 39 survivors have been pulled from the water, some after desperately clinging to fishing buoys for hours in the huge swell until help arrived.
Search-and-rescue teams still have not found the stricken vessel, which was ferrying 118 people around the island of Sulawesi when it sent out a distress signal late on Saturday afternoon, police told reporters.
Photo: AFP
The whereabouts of the remaining 76 people are also still unclear, with search-and-rescue teams hampered by rough conditions and waves up to 5m high as daylight hours dwindle.
When asked whether the boat had sunk, South Sulawesi police spokesman Frans Barung told reporters: “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“The boat has not been found, because the weather has not been good,” he said, adding that the boat was constructed from fiberglass and was therefore difficult to sink.
Authorities lost contact with the ferry late yesterday afternoon, and it failed to arrive at its destination in Siwa across the Bay of Boni as scheduled.
Officials dismissed initial reports that the boat had sunk, instead claiming it was adrift, having lost engine power.
Police, national search-and-rescue teams and the Indonesian Navy have been scouring the seas for survivors ever since, but have been battling harsh elements.
Local search-and-rescue team leader Roki Asikin said powerful waves meant it took three hours to evacuate some survivors to shore.
“These waves were very high,” he said.
There had been warnings about extreme weather in the area in the days leading up to the accident, with strong winds and rough seas.
The Indonesian archipelago, composed of more than 17,000 islands, is heavily dependent on ferry services, but the industry has a poor safety record and fatal accidents are common.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS