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JAKARTA - A ferry carrying up to 269 people sank in bad weather off the Indonesian island of Sumatra Sunday, triggering a desperate search for survivors, police and transport officials said.
The Dumai Express was sailing from Batam island to Pekanbaru when it went down in high seas at around 10:00am (0300GMT) off Karimun island near Singapore, local police official Boy Herlambang told AFP.
Official estimates of the number of passengers and crew on board ranged from 226 to 269, but no one was able to say for sure how many people had been rescued and how many remained lost at sea in the heavy weather.
"The ship's manifest listed 213 passengers and 13 crew members including the ship's captain," local police official Boy Herlambang said.
"Right now many of them are still floating in the water and we're trying to rescue them as quickly as possible."
Officials said heavy rain and large swells might have contributed to the accident and were hampering rescue efforts.
Fishermen had plucked 15 passengers from the choppy waters, sea transport director-general Sunaryo said.
"I'm not able to say how many are missing... I believe we will be able to rescue a large number of them," he added.
Officials dismissed speculation the ship was overloaded, a common practice in Indonesian ferry routes that leads to regular disasters despite repeated official promises to tighten and enforce regulations.
"The maximum capacity is 273 people so the ferry wasn't overloaded. It sank due to very bad weather," Sunaryo said.
Indonesian Navy spokesman Iskandar Sitompul said the vessel was carrying 269 people including the crew.
He said it was completely submerged after being hit by waves as high as three metres.
"We're not sure if anyone is trapped in the ferry. Those who have been rescued are traumatised," he said.
Another ferry travelling from Dumai to Moro island, near to where the Dumai Express sank, ran aground at around 2:00pm but all 270 people on board were safe, transport ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan told AFP.
Indonesia's 234 million people are spread across 17,000 islands and are heavily dependent on a network of ships and boats, which have a poor safety record.
Up to 335 people were killed when a heavily overloaded ferry sank off Sulawesi island in January. In December 2006, a ferry went down in a storm off the coast of Java, killing more than 500 people.
- AFP/yb/ir
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