BANJARMASIN, Indonesia, Sept 13 (Reuters) – At least six people died and another 129 are still missing after an Indonesian passenger ship capsized in the Java Sea during bad weather early on Sunday, the search and rescue agency said.
Crews managed to rescue 108 people from the stricken Virgo Transport 8 ship and were still searching for any other survivors, the agency added.
Families of passengers gathered in the South Kalimantan city of Banjarmasin where the ship had been heading before it lost contact with authorities.
One woman there, who gave her name as Putri, said she had been on the phone to her husband Herman before they lost reception.
“Then after that there was no more contact, we couldn’t reach him,” she told Reuters.
The ship set sail with 243 people, including 30 crew members, from the East Java city of Surabaya on Saturday, the search and rescue agency said.
A passing helicopter reported the ship had capsized, transport minister Dudy Purwagandhi told a press conference. The cause was still being investigated, he added.
The search-and-rescue agency earlier said the ship had sunk.
Rescued passengers had been taken to other ships and some of them would be taken to an East Java port, I Putu Sudayana, the head of the agency’s Banjarmasin office, said in a video statement.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, relies heavily on ferries for transportation, with sea routes more affordable and readily available than air travel.
(Reporting by Awaluddin Jalil in Banjarmasin and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Editing by Jamie Freed, Thomas Derpinghaus and Andrew Heavens)
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