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by Oka Budhi Yogaswara
TERNATE, Indonesia, July 2 (AFP) - Eleven survivors were picked up Sunday after three days adrift in shark-infested waters in Indonesia and confirmed their ferry, packed with 500 refugees, had sunk in high seas. One survivor died soon after being rescued. "Eleven people were found at 7:00 this morning (2300 GMT Saturday) by the Minahasa fishing ship some 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of the Sangir Talaud islands," the head of the eastern Indonesian fleet, Rear Admiral Joko Sumaryono, told journalists here. Another survivor, identified only as Miss Otma, 18, confirmed to her rescuers the boat had been overturned by waves in stormy weather. Sumaryono said all boats involved in the search and rescue operation have converged on the area, near the border with the Philippines. Some of the survivors were found floating in their lifejackets, he added. Since the Cahaya Bahari (Ocean Light) issued an SOS call on Thursday saying its engines were down and it was taking water, no sign had been found either of it or its passengers. It left Tobelo in northern Halmahera in North Maluku province traveling west the day before with 492 people aboard. Halmahera has been the scene of some of the worst atrocities in the wave of Muslim-Christian violence that has plagued the Maluku islands in eastern Indonesia for the past 18 months and resulted in 4,000 deaths. Most of the passengers were Christian refugees from the Duma area near Tobelo, where Muslim forces killed more than 100 people earlier this month. The boat was carrying almost double its maximum passenger load of 270. On the wharf of Manado, south of Sunday's rescue, hundreds of distraught people have waited in the hope of news of relatives who were on the ship. An officer named Udiyanto of the search and rescue agency, said: "The ship, according to the head of the national search and rescue agency who talked by radio with one of the survivors, had sunk. But as to where, we still do not know. "We have now mobilized all ships, including those in the area near where the survivors were found, to comb the area for any more survivors, bodies or evidence of the mishap." A staff member at the harbormaster's office in Tahuna on the island of Sangir said the reported finding was close to the border with the Philippines. Yerda Jawat, of the church's crisis center in Ambon, the main city in the Malukus, was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying the group included men, women and children. Udiyanto said earlier Sunday three navy ships; one private vessel and three airplanes, were searching the Sangir Talaud chain, a series of small islands between North Sulawesi and the southern Philippines. Shipping accidents resulting in high death tolls are commonplace in Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic nation. Many of the disasters are attributed to overloading and lax navigational safety practices. Sixteen bodies were found and nearly 300 people were missing and presumed dead after another boat, 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 on the northern tip of Sumatra. Fifty-five bodies were recovered and at least 283 were never found. Only 39 people were rescued. |
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