Authorities said that 26 people were still missing after the sinking of an Indonesian ferry in Makassar Strait. This Strait separates the islands Sulawesi from Borneo. Djuanidi, the head of rescue services, said that the sinking occurred on Thursday due to bad weather, but the authorities didn’t know until Saturday. (The rescue services, like many Indonesians have only one name).
The ferry carried 43 passengers and ran out fuel. It was sunk by bad weather. He said that 17 people were rescued and that the search for the missing continued on Saturday.
In Indonesia, which is an archipelago of 17,000 islands, accidents at sea are frequent. Safety instructions are not always followed. A ferry carrying over eight hundred people ran aground last week in East Nusa Tenggara, leaving it stranded for more than two days. Nobody was hurt.
More than 150 people died when a ferry capsized in Sumatra in 2018, one of the deepest lakes on the planet.
