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Indonesia expands search for missing fishermen
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Rescue team members evacuate one of six survivors of a capsized passenger boat carrying 16 people in the Sunda strait near Anak Krakatau in Merak, Indonesia's Banten province on Saturday. - The boat was hit by strong waves and ten people are still missing. (AFP/Ronald Siagian )
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ndonesia has expanded the search for seven fishermen still missing after a rescue team found three more survivors of a capsized boat in waters near the Anak Krakatau volcano, officials said Sunday.
A motorboat carrying 16 people sank on Thursday due to strong waves in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra.
Six survivors were found after the accident, and on Sunday, Indonesia's rescue agency said three more were rescued from a traditional fishing boat, which found them floating.
Efforts to find them were extended to a "20-25 kilometers radius to find the seven people still missing", said Heru Amir, a search and rescue official in the Banten province.
The three survivors told rescuers that the seven fishermen tried to swim to a nearby island using objects they took from the capsized boat including jerrycans, according to Amir.
"The distance from the spot where the three survivors were found to a nearby island is 10 nautical miles," Amir said.
Boat accidents are common in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, due to lax safety standards.
In January 10 people went missing after a boat carrying 20 migrant workers to neighboring Malaysia capsized off the coast of Sumatra island.
