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PEKANBARU, INDONESIA — Eleven people drowned in western Indonesia after a passenger boat carrying dozens overturned, an official said Friday.

Rescuers saved 62 people and found the bodies of mostly women and children after the accident off the coast of western Riau province on Thursday afternoon, local search and rescue agency official Kukuh Widodo said in a statement.

“The capsized boat carried 74 people. Sixty-two survived the incident, 11 are dead, and one other is still being searched for,” Pekanbaru national search and rescue agency spokesperson Widodo said Friday.

The speedboat bound for Tanjung Pinang city in the Riau islands capsized shortly after leaving Tembilahan port, located 198 kilometres (123 miles) away in a neighbouring province.

The cause of the accident was still being investigated, the official said.

He warned that the number of missing could grow as the precise number of people aboard the Evelyn Calista 01 was not confirmed.

It is common in Indonesia for the number of actual passengers on a boat to differ from the manifest.

Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, due to lax safety standards.

In 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Sumatra island.

— AFP

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