Eleven survivors from a missing Indonesian ferry packed with Christian refugees fleeing violence in the Spice Islands were found yesterday clinging to debris in the ocean. They told rescuers that the ferry had sunk in rough seas. One survivor died shortly after the rescue.
Officials said a search of the ocean north of the island of Sulawesi was still going on, but the chances of finding more survivors among the 500 passengers of the Cahaya Bahari (Light of the Ocean) were extremely slim.
Many of those aboard were survivors of a massacre last month, when Muslim fighters stormed a Christian village on the island of Halmahera, setting houses and a church ablaze. The clash claimed 114 lives, and most of the remaining villagers fled.
Mr Setio Rahardjo, head of Indonesia's search and rescue team, said 10 passengers had been found in the sea. Some had worn life jackets and others were clinging to debris. "They said the ferry started taking on water and then sank," he said.
The survivors said the ferry sank on Thursday and that they had been floating in the sea for four days and three nights. They were found by a passenger ship yesterday, just as officials were preparing to give up the search for the vanished ferry.
They were spotted off the island of Karakelang on the edge of the Pacific, about 300 km north-east of the Sulawesi city of Manado, where the ferry had been heading when it vanished on Thursday in rough seas and bad weather.
Rescue officials said the survivors were being taken to a nearby island for treatment for sunburn, dehydration and exhaustion.
The ferry was built to hold 200 passengers but around 500 are believed to have squeezed in after hundreds of Christian refugees scrambled aboard in Halmahera.
Halmahera residents said among the passengers were 30 injured Christians being transferred to hospitals on Sulawesi.
Most of the refugees were from the Halmahera village of Duma, now virtually deserted after the attack by Muslims last month. It was one of the bloodiest clashes in the religious war in the province which erupted in early 1999 and has claimed the lives of thousands of Christians and Muslims.
The survivors were found after four days of intensive searches by Indonesian ships and planes. Hundreds of relatives of the missing passengers have waited at Manado's port for news since the ferry vanished.
Hopes were briefly raised on Saturday after reports that the ferry had been found and its passengers were safe. But the navy later said a mistake had been made, compounding the agony.
The navy also investigated a report that Muslim fighters had captured the vessel and were holding it on a remote island off Halmahera. But this, too, proved false.
On the wharf of Manado hundreds of distraught people waited in the hope of news of relatives. One woman at the port, Ms Anne Paneda, said she had escaped from Halmahera on a refugee ship a week ago but the rest of her family were on the missing ferry. "My husband and my two children had to take the boat. They're in the missing boat," she said.
Many of Indonesia's frequent shipping accidents are attributed to overloading and lax navigational safety practices.
Sixteen bodies were found and nearly 300 people were missing and presumed dead after the Harta Rimba sank off the western coast of Borneo island in February 1999. In January 1996 an overloaded ferry sank in bad weather off Weh Island off Sumatra. Fifty-five bodies were recovered and at least 283 were never found. Only 39 people were rescued.