200 rescued from sunken Indonesia ferry

Rembang: At least 200 people survived the sinking of an Indonesian ferry, the health ministry said yesterday, even as body bags were being prepared for victims and more than 400 remained unaccounted for.

Although confirmed deaths were in single digits, officials said corpses from the disaster overnight on Friday were scattered for miles on beaches along Java's coastline, and local media have reported at least 60 bodies found.

A survivor said he was surrounded by floating bodies after the sinking and many had also gone down with the ship.

At a hospital in Rembang in Central Java, Agung Subiarto, a medical team member, said: "We have prepared 100 body bags to anticipate the possibility of [receiving] dead bodies."

Anxious and exhausted-looking relatives of passengers on the ship sat in a field in front of the hospital or in a large tent the army provided as they waited to see if their family members were brought in alive or dead, a photographer said.

According to the manifest, the Senopati Nusantara ferry was carrying 628 people, including 57 crew.

The number of survivors was at least 200, according to Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry crisis centre.

He said via text message that 130 survivors were in the East Java town of Tuban and 70 in Rembang.

Those numbers could go up as officials say some survivors have been picked up by ships headed for different ports and that life rafts with people aboard have been spotted but not reached. Huge waves have hampered rescue operations.

Search and Rescue official Budiantoro, coordinating fishermen helping in the search, said rescuing survivors took precedence over recovering bodies.

"There is a report that [the fishermen] have found 53 bodies ... but they prioritise helping the survivors so they have left the bodies where they are," he said.

Toni Syaiful, spokesman for the navy's eastern fleet, said: "We are having problems because the victims are spread all across the beaches from Jepara to Rembang to Tuban." The area he described stretches some 175 km long.

On Monday one navy ship found three survivors and three dead, another carrying 13 survivors was on its way to port, and nine more survivors had been found by other vessels, he said.

Television channel SCTV showed Indonesian air force crew dropping food for some survivors who were still afloat but hadn't been reached by rescue vessels because of high waves.

Thirty-five survivors picked up by fishing boats landed in Tuban in East Java province early yesterday.

They appeared weak and exhausted after an ordeal that began when the Senopati Nusantara ran into trouble.

One survivor said that as it started to roll over in high seas and heavy rains a ship officer had shouted "stay calm, stay calm" and ordered everybody to abandon ship.

"People started to fall off the lower side where the trucks were. I fell off also," said Susilo, a plantation worker who was crossing over to Java to celebrate Eid.

"Five minutes later, the ship sank and it sank in just one minute."

"I saw many children and people sink with the ship. I swam until I started to get tired, then I started looking for a life jacket. Around me were many dead people wearing life jackets. So I held onto one of the bodies," said Susilo.

Another survivor, Yanti, said many elderly passengers failed to get into lifeboats. "Many old people were just resigned to their fate when the ship began sinking. I thank God for allowing me to live longer," she told state news agency Antara.