Indonesian ships scoured the sea in vain yesterday for hundreds of people - mostly Christian refugees fleeing religious violence in the spice islands - who were feared drowned after an overcrowded ferry sank in rough seas.
Rescuers said hopes of finding any survivors were fading.
"It would be a miracle if we could find anyone still alive," the head of the search and rescue team, in the north Sulawesi capital of Manado, said.
He said three warships and a ship belonging to the search and rescue team had been searching the area where the ferry went down on Thursday.
A call had gone out for other ships to help. The navy said an aircraft also had joined the search.
The ferry was built to hold 200 passengers but around 500 are believed to have squeezed in after hundreds of Christians scrambled aboard on the island of Halmahera, scene of fierce fighting between Christians and Muslims this month.
Officials say there were 198 passengers and crew members and around 290 refugees on the ferry.
Halmahera residents said the ferry was carrying 30 wounded Christians being transferred to hospitals on the island of Sulawesi, the ferry's destination.
Most of the refugees were from the Halmahera village of Duma, where at least 114 people were killed when armed Muslim fighters attacked the village last week, setting ablaze a church where refugees were sheltering.
It was one of the bloodiest clashes in the religious conflict, which erupted in early 1999 and has claimed the lives of thousands of Christians and Muslims.
At least four people drowned when a freighter sank off the Indonesian port town of Kendari yesterday in the second sea tragedy in the country in two days, the Antara state news agency said.
Antara said a search and rescue team saved 52 people from the freighter, KM Kurnia, which went down off Kendari in southeast Sulawesi yesterday afternoon.