Almost 140 missing after passenger ferry loses contact in rough seas

Family members of passengers on the ferry read updates from a whiteboard (Picture: INFUZ/AFP via Getty Images)

One person has died and around 140 people are missing after contact was lost with a passenger ferry between a pair of Indonesian islands.

Search and rescue officials have saved 103 people from the Virgo Transport 8 ship after it encountered bad weather and rough seas between Java and Borneo.

The vessel was last reported to be just under 150km from its destination of Banjarmasin in the south of Borneo,at 2am local time today.

It had set off from Surabaya,Indonesia’s second-largest city after the capital Jakarta,carrying 243 passengers and crew.

The country’s search and rescue agency earlier said: ‘At the time of this statement,the ship cannot be contacted and its whereabouts are unknown.’

I Putu Sudayana,the local head of the agency,told reporters: ‘We have carried out efforts to search for victims to the fullest extent.

Sign up for all of the latest stories

Start your day informed with Metro's News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.‘There were passengers who had already been successfully evacuated by the units at the scene. We can inform you that the total number of evacuated passengers is 103 people.’Some of the people who were evacuated would be taken to a port in East Java,he said.A search and rescue team looking for the passenger ship (Picture: EPA)He added that authorities later gained information that indicated the ferry had overturned.Ships and a helicopter have been deployed to track down survivors.Ferries are a common mode of transport in Indonesia,an archipelago containing 17,000 islands.But the services have a relatively high accident rate as safety standards are not always rigorously enforced.Last month,a separate ferry caught fire near Madura,an island that lies off the coast of Surabaya. Five people died in the incident.Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at .For more stories like this,check our news page.