Indonesia ferry fire kills 5; number of missing passengers remains unclear
Indonesian rescuers searched for possible missing passengers on Monday after a ferry caught fire off the main island of Java, killing at least five people and leaving authorities uncertain about how many were still unaccounted for.
The Mutiara Sentosa 2 ferry was carrying more people than listed on its manifest when the fire broke out on Sunday, officials said. A total of 229 people had been rescued and five bodies recovered by Monday morning.
Initial reports based on the ship's manifest said the ferry was carrying 232 passengers and 39 crew members when it caught fire between 6 am and 7 am in waters off Sumenep regency.
However, officials later said many more people were believed to have been aboard, making it difficult to determine the number of missing passengers. Authorities were relying on information from families and survivors to establish the actual number of people on the ferry.
It is common in Indonesia for the number of passengers aboard boats and ferries to differ from official manifests, a discrepancy that can reflect overcrowding and complicate search and rescue operations, said Nanang Sigit, head of the Surabaya Search and Rescue Office.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known and remained under investigation.
The ferry was also carrying 180 vehicles, mostly trucks, and an excavator. One survivor, Ahmad Abdul Karim, said the fire appeared to have started from a truck on the lower vehicle deck.
"Fanned by the wind, the flames spread extremely quickly," Karim said. "In less than 30 minutes, everyone had been instructed to move to the bow of the ferry."
A rescue boat was dispatched from Surabaya to the scene, about 35 kilometres north of Buruan Sapudi island in Sumenep regency. Indonesian navy ships and passing vessels also joined the rescue operation.
The ferry, built in Japan in 1992, was sold to Indonesia in 2015. It is 160 metres long and can accommodate up to 689 passengers and 49 crew members, along with 181 vehicles.
The Mutiara Sentosa 2 operates on the Surabaya-Makassar route, a journey of about 40 hours that is used mainly by domestic travellers and for cargo transport between Java and Sulawesi.
Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, relies heavily on ferries for transportation. Maritime disasters occur regularly, with weak enforcement of safety regulations often cited as a contributing factor.
