AT least one person has died and a further 140 passengers are still missing from a stricken Indonesian passenger ferry.
Rescuers lost contact with the Virgo Transport 8 ship, which was carrying 243 people, after it hit bad weather in the Java sea.
An urgent search operation is underway, with 103 of the passengers being evacuated so far.
The stricken ship had been travelling from Surabaya, the country’s second largest city, to the south Kalimantan city of Banjarmasin.
Its location was last reported to be around 90 miles south of its destination at 2am.
Search and rescue chief I Putu Sudayana said: “We can inform you that the total number of evacuated passengers is 103 people.
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One of the passengers had died, he told reporters in the port city of Banjarmasin, where the vessel was headed.
Rescuers battled waves of up to 8.2 ft to reach the ferry, he added.
Sudayana said: “It is extremely risky for vessels. Even our Basarnas vessel, which is 40 meters long, is at great risk.”
He earlier said that the ship’s captain had reported that the vessel was “tilting” before losing contact.
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Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia — an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that relies heavily on boat connections for daily transport and tourism.
Lax safety standards and unpredictable weather are the main reasons for the disasters.
On Monday, a speedboat carrying eight people, including five journalists working for local and international news agencies went missing near a volcano, Mount Anak Krakatau, in Banten province and a search is ongoing.
The journalists were sent to cover the volcano’s eruption that paralysed Jakarta’s main airport and several others.
Last month, a fire on board a ferry killed one person and left five others missing while 211 were rescued in the Lombok Strait off Indonesia’s Bali island.
The ferry had been heading from Bali to Lombok when it ran into trouble in the early hours of August 12.
In July, a ferry transporting more than 70 people sank while sailing near Selayar, a small island south of Sulawesi.