One woman died and more than 170 were rescued yesterday after a ferry caught fire off the Indonesian island of Bali, a rescue official said, in the second such incident in days.
A navy vessel and other ships evacuated 172 people from the stricken passenger vessel, including two Australian tourists, Mataram Search and Rescue Office head Muhamad Hariyadi said.
A 19-year-old Indonesian woman was declared dead, he said.
Photo: AFP
At Lembar on Lombok’s west coast, one person was brought ashore in a body bag.
The KM Putri Yasmin left Port of Padangbai in Bali for the Port of Lembar on Lombok in the province of West Nusa Tenggara, Hariyadi said.
Survivor Kiky Okta Pradika, 25, told reporters in Lembar he had grabbed a life jacket before jumping overboard with several other passengers.
Photo screen grab from video provided by National Search and Rescue Agency via AP
“There were a few hours before there was any help,” he said.
Passengers were evacuated on at least three different vessels, including a navy ship and another ferry that rushed to help in the early morning hours, Hariyadi said.
Search-and-rescue vessels were at the scene and a helicopter was conducting surveillance from the air, he said, adding that more than 200 personnel had been deployed to handle the operation.
It was unclear how the ferry caught fire, or whether overcrowding was a factor.
The incident took place less than a month after another ferry, the KM Mutiara Sentosa 2, caught fire off Madura island, killing five people.
The vessel was carrying more people than its manifest showed.
A ferry transporting more than 70 people sank while sailing near Selayar, a small island south of Sulawesi, last month.
Four bodies were recovered, but the search operation ended with 14 others still officially missing.
Additional reporting by Reuters
A Chinese rocket carrying a communications satellite failed in its launch, state media said, attributing the failure to a “flight anomaly” as reports and videos suggested the spacecraft had exploded in mid-air. Beijing has plowed billions of dollars into its space program in the past few years to achieve what Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) calls the country’s “space dream.” Monday’s rare launch failure involved a Long March 7A carrier rocket, which lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s southernmost province of Hainan at 8:02pm, state news agency Xinhua said. An “anomaly” occurred when the rocket, which was carrying the
Beijing has quietly confirmed the deaths of two Chinese sailors in a collision in the contested South China Sea, according to government statements nearly a year after the incident. In August last year, a China Coast Guard ship collided bow first with a Chinese naval destroyer while chasing a Philippine patrol boat near the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), video footage released by Manila showed. A China Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed at the time that there had been a confrontation, but did not mention the collision, nor injuries or deaths. The Chinese People’s Armed Police Force said on social media on Wednesday
‘COCKROACH’ PARTY: The youth-led movement said it plans to travel across the nation to gather ideas for reforms directly from the public, but will not join elections The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which spearheaded one of India’s biggest student protests, yesterday accused authorities of violating an agreement by pursuing participants and reiterated that it would remain a pressure group rather than enter electoral politics. Police continue to investigate cases against some students who took part in the New Delhi protests last month, despite a government agreement to withdraw legal action, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka told Bloomberg Television’s Menaka Doshi. The group had called off the protests after the agreement was reached. “There were clear instances where this agreement was reneged,” Ranka said, citing cases that remained active in several
Artificial intelligence (AI) users are shopping around as US giants face fierce competition from Chinese rivals — and in Beijing’s tech district, drinkers at an AI-themed bar can even plug in to DeepSeek for free. A new generation of cost-efficient, high-performance Chinese AI is putting pressure on Silicon Valley’s leading labs to lower prices to grab market share as they try and find ways to turn a profit. ChatGPT maker OpenAI has slashed fees by 80 percent for its latest lightweight model “Luna” and Anthropic has unveiled a model approaching its most powerful system’s performance at half the price. Meanwhile, some of China’s
RSS