Global Courant
JAKARTA, Indonesia — An overloaded passenger boat capsized off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Monday, killing at least 15 people and leaving 19 others missing, rescuers said.
The small wooden boat capsized just after midnight, said Muhammad Arafah, a local search and rescue agency official. He said it had moved people from one village to another in Buton Central, a regency or administrative district in southeastern Sulawesi.
Rescuers searched Monday for 19 people still missing in rough seas, said Mr. Arafah. He said six people had been rescued and 15 bodies had been recovered.
Thousands of people in Buton Central had gone to their villages on Sunday for a local celebration, many of them traveling by fishing or passenger boat.
Television news showed people on fishing boats collecting bodies in the night’s darkness, and grieving relatives waiting for information at a harbor and a local hospital.
Ferries are a common means of transportation in Indonesia, an archipelago of over 17,000 islands. With safety standards generally lax and overcrowding common, accidents often happen.
In 2018, an overcrowded ferry with about 200 people on board sank in a lake in North Sumatra province, killing 167 people.
In one of Indonesia’s worst recorded disasters, an overcrowded passenger ship with 332 people on board sank in February 1999. Only 20 people survived.
