Rescuers in Indonesia are searching in rough seas for 38 people who went missing after a ferry sank while en route to the resort island of Bali, resulting in at least four confirmed fatalities.
The ferry departed shortly before 11 p.m. local time on Wednesday from a port on Java, Indonesia’s main island, carrying 53 passengers and 12 crew members. The typical journey to Bali takes less than an hour; however, the crew issued a distress call at 11:20 p.m., and the ferry sank just 15 minutes later, according to officials.
As of Thursday morning, four bodies had been recovered, as reported by the search and rescue agency in Surabaya, a major city in East Java.
During the night, 23 individuals were rescued from the water as more than 10 boats and local fishermen conducted searches in waves exceeding six feet. On Thursday, families gathered at the port in Banyuwangi, East Java, for updates on the missing passengers.
Ferry accidents are a common occurrence in Indonesia, an archipelago consisting of over 17,000 islands.
The ferry that sank, the KMT Tunu Pratama Jaya, is the second passenger ferry to go down off Bali in the past month; the first capsized in early June, but all 89 people aboard were rescued.
Last year, Bali welcomed over six million international tourists.
This is a developing story.