Key points
- The vessel reportedly capsized around 11:00 am Monday: Rescue agency
- Says seven of 18 people on board boat rescued
- Officials did not give a cause for the boat capsizing
ISLAMABAD: At least 11 people are missing after a boat capsized off Indonesia’s western island of Sumatra, a local search and rescue agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
AFP cited Mentawai search and rescue agency as saying the vessel reportedly capsized around 11:00 am Monday as it sailed around the Mentawai islands, an archipelago off the west coast of Sumatra.
Seven of the 18 people on board the boat were rescued, it said.
Rescuers were focusing their search around the location of the accident, said Mentawai search and rescue agency head Rudi.
Rescue efforts
“Our focus is on combing the area around the estimated accident site to find all victims,” Rudi said in a statement.
He did not give a cause for the boat capsizing, but marine accidents are a regular occurrence in the Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, in part due to lax safety standards or bad weather.
Reuters reported that a ferry sank earlier this month near the island of Bali. Of the 65 people on board, 18 died, 30 survived, and 17 remain missing.
AFP reported that in March, a boat carrying 16 people capsized in rough waters off Bali, killing an Australian woman and injuring at least one other person.
In 2018, over 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Sumatra island.
