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11 dead after boat capsizes in Riau
Eleven people drowned in western Indonesia after a passenger boat carrying dozens overturned, an official said on Friday.
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Eleven people drowned in western Indonesia after a passenger boat carrying dozens overturned, an official said on Friday.
Rescuers saved 62 people and found the bodies of mostly women and children after the accident, which occurred off the coast of western Riau on Thursday afternoon, according to a statement from the Pekanbaru Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas).
"The capsized boat carried 74 people. Sixty-two survived the incident, 11 are dead and one other [person] is still being searched for," Basarnas Pekanbaru spokesperson Kukuh Widodo said on Friday.
The Evelyn Calista 01 speedboat, bound for the city of Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands, capsized shortly after leaving Tembilahan port, located 198 kilometers away in a neighboring province.
The cause of the accident was still being investigated, Kukuh said.
He also warned that the number of missing could grow, as the precise number of people aboard the speedboat was not confirmed.
It is common in Indonesia for the number of actual onboard passengers to differ from a boat’s manifest. Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in the archipelagic nation of around 17,000 islands due to lax safety standards.
In 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in Lake Toba, one of the world's deepest lakes, located in North Sumatra.
Last year, 26 passengers reported missing when a fishing boat carrying undocumented migrant workers sank off the coast of North Sumatra were found alive, some after drifting for two days. Two of the vessel's 90 passengers, who were seeking work in neighboring Malaysia, were killed.
The wooden vessel sank off the province near the coastal area of Tanjung Api as it attempted to sail through an unguarded route to Malaysia. The boat sprang a leak soon after departing before it was hit by strong waves and capsized.
Officials had said 89 people were onboard at the time of the sinking, but later revised the figure to 90 following testimony from the boat's captain.
In January, six Indonesian women drowned off the coast of Malaysia when their boat sank during a suspected attempt to enter the country illegally.
In December, 21 Indonesian migrants were killed when their boat capsized.
