Indonesian Rescue Operations Underway for Missing Ferry with 140 People Onboard > 월드뉴스

Indonesian rescuers are actively searching for 140 individuals from a passenger ship reported missing in the Java Sea after bad weather caused the vessel to lose contact. The Virgo Transport 8 was carrying over 240 people when it set sail from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan on Saturday. The search and rescue agency reported that 103 people were evacuated from the ship, but one person died during the incident. I Putu Sudayana, head of the agency’s Banjarmasin office, confirmed that the evacuation involved multiple ships, with some survivors being transported to an East Java port. The agency received the distress report approximately two hours after the ship lost contact around 2 AM on Sunday. Sudayana noted that the ship's operator informed authorities about the bad weather conditions that affected the vessel. Indonesia, an archipelago consisting of 17,000 islands, heavily relies on ferries for transportation, but safety regulations are often inadequately enforced, leading to a high accident rate.