Divers have recovered 52 bodies so far from the Indonesian ferry that capsized in rough seas earlier this month, officials have said.
The Virgo Transport 8 ferry was sailing from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan on the Borneo island with 243 people passengers and crew members when it made a distress call on 13 September, reporting that the vessel was listing in rough seas, with waves reaching 3m.
Authorities later learned that the ferry had capsized in the waters of the Masalembo archipelago in the Java Sea.
While rescue workers found 108 survivors in the hours after the disaster, officials said, 83 people were still missing.
The divers recovered many of the bodies after smashing the ferry’s windows underwater to enter it. Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency said all available resources had been deployed for the search operation.
“Our primary focus is to locate the missing victims and provide closure to their families,” the agency head, Mohammad Syafii, said on Friday.
The agency is still planning to salvage the ferry and pull the wreckage from a depth of about 30m.
The recovered bodies were taken to the police hospital in Banjarmasin for identification before being handed over to their families.
Indonesia is an archipelago nation of over 17,000 islands where ferries are a common mode of travel. Disasters occur regularly and are often blamed on weak safety enforcement.
