(Kendari) At least 15 people were killed and 19 others missing Monday after a ferry sank off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, search and rescue officials said.
The boat sank with 40 people on board just after midnight local time (1 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday), the local office of the Indonesian search and rescue agency said in a statement.
Six people were rescued and taken to hospital for treatment, while the causes of the sinking are being investigated.
“As of now, 19 people are still wanted,” Muhamad Arafah, head of the local search and rescue agency in Kendari city, southeast Sulawesi, said in a statement.
“The research will be carried out in two teams. The first team will dive around the accident site,” he said, “the second team will sweep the surface of the water around the accident site in a dinghy and a rowboat.”
In Indonesia, it is common for the actual number of passengers on a ship to differ from the ship’s log.
Maritime accidents are common in this Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, where residents use ferries and small boats to get around despite poor safety standards.
In 2018, more than 150 people drowned in the sinking of a ferry sailing on one of the deepest lakes in the world, in Sumatra.
In May last year, a ferry carrying more than 800 people ran aground in shallow waters off East Nusa Tenggara province and was stranded for two days before being refloated. No one was injured in this accident.