JamzNG Latest News, Gist, Entertainment in Nigeria
The search continues to find at least 129 people missing after a ferry capsized due to bad weather in the Java Sea, Indonesia on Sunday.
At least 108 people were rescued and the bodies of six passengers were recovered as search operations expanded around the ship’s last known position.
The ferry carrying more than 240 people was traveling from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, on Kalimantan Island, officials said.
The captain had reported rough seas with waves of up to 3 meters (10 feet) before issuing a distress call, saying the ship was listing, said I Putu Sudayana, head of the Banjarmasin Search and Rescue Office. Authorities later received information indicating the boat had capsized.
The rescue agency in Banjarmasin said it received a report two hours after contact was lost with Virgo Transport 8 at around 02.00 Sunday.
A rescue ship was heading to the ship’s last known position, the agency said, and on Sunday afternoon authorities deployed a team supported by a dozen ships, including four navy ships, and two helicopters.
Survivors were rescued and bodies were found
Get the latest national news
Get the latest Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss a trending story.
Preliminary information indicates the ship’s last known position was in the Java Sea, about 148 kilometers (92 miles) from Banjarmasin. The ship’s manifest stated it was carrying 243 people – 213 passengers and 30 crew members – although in Indonesia it is normal for the number of passengers to differ from the manifest. The ship also carried 89 vehicles.
Sudayana, who coordinated the search, said search teams, aided by nearby tugboats and other passing vessels, had rescued 107 people and recovered six bodies by Sunday afternoon.
The 119-meter (390-foot) Virgo Transport 8 ferry was built in Japan in 1987 and operated there until last year before being sold to the current Indonesian operator, PT Virgo Karya Shipping.
Transport Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said an aerial search showed the ferry was floating upside down and not sinking. Rescue teams focused their search efforts around the capsized ferry, he told reporters on Sunday.
Video released by the National Search and Rescue Agency on Sunday showed an overturned ferry floating in choppy waters during a helicopter search operation. Separate footage showed exhausted survivors disembarking from a rescue boat at a port in Banjarmasin, while injured victims were carried on stretchers before being taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
Desperate relatives waited for news at the port
Hundreds of relatives gathered at the command center at Banjarmasin’s Trisakti port, waiting for news about family members believed to be on the ferry. Many anxiously checked passenger lists and rescue lists as authorities continued to search for survivors.
“I was shocked when I saw my uncle’s name on the passenger list,” said the woman who only has one name, Bunga. “But I felt relieved after the officers told me that he had been rescued.”
Indonesia is an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands where ferries are a common method of travel. Disasters occur frequently, and are often blamed on lax safety enforcement.
At least 211 people were rescued from an Indonesian ferry that caught fire last month in rough seas near the tourist island of Bali, while one person was found dead and four others remain missing. The incident comes less than two weeks after another Indonesian ferry, the Mutiara Sentosa 2, caught fire off the coast of the main island of Java, leaving at least five people missing.
Sunday’s accident came just four days after a fire gutted a passenger ferry in the Philippines killing at least 76 people, and at least 10 others are still missing.
—Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Fadlan Syam in Jakarta and Edna Tarigan and Andi Jatmiko in Pontianak, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
© 2026 Canadian Press
