A red and yellow boat traveling down a river

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Rescuers Search Java Sea for 140 Missing People

worldSep 14, 2026·359 words·3 min read

Indonesian rescuers were searching the Java Sea on Sunday for around 140 people after a passenger ship carrying more than 240 people lost contact in bad weather. The vessel, the Virgo Transport 8, had set off from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, in East Java at 10:13 a.m. on Saturday, bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo. Contact was lost at about 2 a.m. on Sunday, and the ship's last known position was roughly 148 kilometres (92 miles) from a pier in Banjarmasin.

The company that runs the ship told the authorities that the ship had met bad weather. ABC (the American Broadcasting Company) and Fox News said there were no reports of deaths or injuries at that time. Fox News said the cause was not clear. Indonesia has about 17,000 islands, so the ferry is an important and cheap way to travel. A ferry is a boat that carries people. But safety rules are not always followed, so accidents are quite common.

I Putu Sudayana is the head of the search and rescue office. He said they were using all their staff and equipment because so many people were on the ship. Ships and a helicopter went to the place where the ship was last known to be. The search is still going on.

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