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Indonesia to halt search for ferry victims
AFP - 27 minutes ago
PARE-PARE, Indonesia (AFP) - - Indonesia will halt the search Tuesday for hundreds of people listed as missing from a ferry disaster nine days ago, with the final death toll still unknown, officials said.
"We are officially halting the search efforts soon after the sun goes down around 6:00 pm (1000 GMT) today," said Colonel Jaka Santosa, a navy officer coordinating the search in the Makassar Strait.
He said only 35 survivors had been rescued and nine bodies recovered since the 700-tonne Teratai Prima capsized and sank in rough seas before dawn on January 11 as it sailed between the islands of Sulawesi and Borneo.
The ferry's manifest showed 267 passengers and crew on board but officials have said the names of more than 100 other missing people were not on the list. Santosa said the exact death toll was not known but he estimated it was almost 300. Most of the dead are believed to be trapped in the ferry deep under the sea.
"We don't know the exact number of missing passengers but after analysing all documents and reports from relatives and the ferry captain, my estimate is approximately 262 people are still missing," he said.
"According to the ferry's captain, the sinking process happened in five minutes while the passengers were still asleep. It's very deep and the pressure under the sea will cause a human body to break into pieces."
About 130 grieving relatives boarded four navy ships and scattered flowers at sea where the ferry is believed to have sunk.
Peter Kala, who had dozens of friends and relatives from his hometown of Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi on board the ferry, said it was time to accept they were gone.
"It's God's will that we need to accept. We understand if they stopped the search because as a human being we cannot refuse our fate," he told AFP.
The captain faces five years in jail if found guilty of negligence after allegedly ignoring storm warnings and exceeding the ferry's passenger capacity, which was only 205.
Indonesians rely on ferries to travel the massive archipelago of about 17,000 islands, but accidents are common and safety regulations are badly enforced.
The disaster was the worst of its kind in Indonesia since December 2006 when a ferry sank in a storm off the coast of Java, killing more than 500 people.
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