Two-hundred rescued from Indonesia ferry sinking

TUBAN, Indonesia, Jan 1 (Reuters) At least 200 people survived the sinking of an Indonesian ferry, the health ministry said today, even as body bags were being prepared for victims and more than 400 remained unaccounted for.

Although confirmed deaths were in single digits, officials said corpses from the disaster overnight on Friday were scattered for miles on beaches along Java's coastline, and local media have reported at least 60 bodies found.

A survivor told Reuters he was surrounded by floating bodies after the sinking and many had also gone down with the ship.

At a hospital in Rembang in Central Java, Agung Subiarto, a medical team member, told Reuters: ''We have prepared 100 body bags to anticipate the possibility of (receiving) dead bodies.'' He said he expected possibly 50 bodies today.

According to the manifest, the Senopati Nusantara was carrying 628 people, including 57 crew.

The number of survivors was at least 200, according to Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry crisis centre.

He told Reuters via text message that 130 survivors were in the East Java town of Tuban and 70 in Rembang in Central Java.

Those numbers could go up as officials say some survivors have been picked up by ships headed for different ports and that life rafts with people aboard have been spotted but not reached. Huge waves have hampered rescue operations.

Search and Rescue official Budiantoro, coordinating fishermen helping in the search from Semarang on the Central Java coast, said rescuing survivors took precedence over recovering bodies.

''There is a report that (the fishermen) have found 53 bodies ...

but they prioritise helping the survivors so they have left the bodies where they are,'' he told Reuters.

Toni Syaiful, spokesman for the navy's eastern fleet, said: ''We are having problems because the victims are spread all across the beaches from Jepara to Rembang to Tuban.'' The area he described stretches some 175 km long.

Thirty-five survivors picked up by fishing boats landed in Tuban in East Java province early today.

WEAK AND EXHAUSTED They appeared weak and exhausted after an ordeal that began when the Senopati Nusantara ferry ran into trouble.

One survivor said that as it started to roll over in high seas and heavy rains a ship officer had shouted ''stay calm, stay calm'' and ordered everybody to abandon ship.

''People started to fall off the lower side where the trucks were. I fell off also,'' said Susilo, a plantation worker in Kalimantan who was crossing over to Java to celebrate a Muslim holiday with his family.

''Five minutes later, the ship sank and it sank in just one minute,'' he told Reuters.

''I saw many children and people sink with the ship. I swam until I started to get tired, then I started looking for a life jacket.

Around me were many dead people wearing life jackets. So I held onto one of the bodies,'' said Susilo. Like other survivors in Tuban he had cuts on his arms and legs.

Another survivor, Yanti, said many elderly passengers failed to get into lifeboats.

''Many old people were just resigned to their fate when the ship began sinking. I thank God for allowing me to live longer,'' she told state news agency Antara.

Ten aircraft, including both helicopters and fixed-wing planes, and nearly 20 vessels were involved in the organised search effort for survivors and bodies today, officials said.

Officials have said they expected the search to last at least nine days, which would take it through next weekend.

Transportation Minister Hatta Rajasa said the Japanese-built, 2,178-tonne ferry was seaworthy and had a capacity of more than 850 passengers.

The ship had been heading from Kalimantan on Borneo island to Semarang. It was the second ferry disaster in as many days after a vessel overturned on Thursday in rough seas off Sumatra. Two people on that ferry died and 26 were missing as of late yesterday, a rescue official said.

Ships and ferries are a popular means of transport among Indonesia's 17,000 islands, where sea connections are cheaper and more available than air routes. However, safety standards are not always enforced, and accidents occur fairly often.

Reuters MS GC1510