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View all search resultsBad weather hampers Virgo Transport ferry rescue
Dozens of people remain unaccounted for three days after the Virgo Transport 8, which carried 213 passengers and 30 crew, went down early Sunday.
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An aerial view of the Virgo Transport 8 passenger ship that capsized in Indonesia's Java sea, September 13, 2026, in this still image taken from video. (Reuters via Handout/National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas))
R
escuers brought ashore on Tuesday nearly two dozen survivors from a passenger ship that capsized off Java island at the weekend, their evacuation delayed by bad weather, officials said.
Dozens of people remain unaccounted for three days after the Virgo Transport 8, which carried 213 passengers and 30 crew, went down early Sunday.
Six people have died while a total of 108 have been rescued alive and 129 others are still missing, the National Search and Rescue Agency, Basarnas, said in a statement Tuesday. The death toll and the missing figure have remained unchanged since Sunday.
The ferry had lost contact with its shipping company shortly after departing from Surabaya in East Java, headed for Banjarmasin East Kalimantan.
Footage released by the rescue agency on Monday showed the capsized vessel with a part of the hull visible above the water line.
Basarnas said that 22 survivors were brought to a harbour in Banjarmasin on Tuesday, after bad weather had prevented their rescue a day earlier.
"The plan was to evacuate them to Trisakti Port yesterday, but adverse weather conditions prevented us from doing so," local search and rescue agency head I Putu Sudayana told reporters.
"We cannot fight nature, the swells and waves in the area were extremely high."
Four bodies were also airlifted to Banjarmasin Tuesday, Basarnas said.
Six people died in the accident and 129 remain missing as of Tuesday as rescuers battled rough seas and strong wind in their operation to find survivors. Some 234 were aboard.
The ferry was travelling about 510 kilometres from Surabaya to Banjarmasin, roughly a 20-hour trip.
It left the port in Surabaya on Saturday afternoon, and was reported missing on Sunday morning. Authorities eventually found it inverted around 80 nautical miles (nearly 150 km) from the Banjarmasin port.
Nearly 1,100 rescuers, including from the navy and police, were involved in the search operation, which also included more than a dozen vessels and five aircraft, the agency said.
Lax safety standards and unpredictable weather are the main reasons for the disasters.
![A police tape reads “Crime scene [...]“ in this undated illustration of a crime scene.](https://img.jakpost.net/c/2026/09/14/2026_09_14_179717_1789368331._medium.jpg)
