JAKARTA, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Indonesian authorities will continue searching on Monday for more than a hundred people still missing after a passenger ship sank in the Java Sea last week, with the confirmed death toll now at 10, its rescue agency said on Sunday.
The passenger ship, Virgo Transport 8, was carrying 243 people, including 30 crew members, when it capsized in bad weather early on September 13 during a 20-hour voyage from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan.
“Hopefully the weather at the site will be favorable (tomorrow)…so more victims trapped inside the ship can be evacuated,” said I Putu Sudayana, an official at the national rescue agency in a press conference.
Sunday’s operation was hampered by strong currents, he said.
On Monday, the agency will send a remotely operated vehicle into the vessel to help guide the divers during the operation, Putu added.
The divers recovered on Sunday one more body from inside the ship’s hull, after finding three victims on Friday. Following the latest operation, 125 passengers remained unaccounted for and 108 people had survived.
The rescue agency has extended for a week the recovery operation due to the large number of missing people and because the salvage operation to right the ship is expected to take time, authorities said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; editing by Lincoln Feast and Toby Chopra)
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