A major search operation has been launched after a passenger vessel carrying 240 people disappeared off the coast of Indonesia.
Rescue teams mobilised on Sunday, September 13, after the Virgo Transport 8 lost contact in the Java Sea while travelling from East Java to South Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
Ship lost contact in the Java Sea
The Search and Rescue Office in Banjarmasin, the capital of South Kalimantan province, confirmed the ship had suffered a communication failure while en route to the city from Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, located in East Java province.
Early reports indicated the vessel's last known location was in the Java Sea, approximately 148 kilometres (92 miles) from a pier in Banjarmasin. The ship's manifest listed 241 passengers on board. No casualties have been reported at this stage.
Rescue teams deployed
Arianto Ardi, operations chief at Banjarmasin's rescue agency, confirmed that contact with the vessel had been lost and that rescue teams had been deployed to the area.
"We have established an operations post at Trisakti," Arianto said.
Authorities revealed that the ship's operator flagged the incident after receiving reports that the vessel had been caught in adverse weather conditions.
The alarming development comes just days after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck Java, Indonesia. The tremor occurred at a depth of 143km (89 miles) and carried no tsunami risk, according to Indonesia's geophysics agency.
"Taking into account the location of the epicentre and the depth of its hypocentre, the earthquake was a deep earthquake caused by intraslab activity," he said in a statement, adding that tsunami modelling showed no tsunami threat.
