Indonesia searches missing people after ferry sinks

Indonesian rescue teams scoured the high seas off Sumatra Island on Friday for 39 people after a ferry sank in a storm, a senior navy official said.

The navy had rescued 94 people from the Sinar Mulia Indah ferry which ran into bad weather and high waves early on June 22, Lieutenant-Colonel Jaka Santoso, chief of the Sibolga naval base, said. No deaths have been reported so far.

"The difficulty we have been facing since yesterday is the high waves. Because of the high waves, survivors are hard to spot," Santoso added.

He said search teams had not found anybody in the ferry itself, which they had located some 50 meters deep into the sea.

There were no U.S. citizens on the ferry, he said, a day after other officials said three Americans were on the boat's manifest.

The ferry, which regularly takes people to Nias Island , popular with surfers, sprang a leak before it hit huge waves and bad weather made things worse, he said.

Ferries are a popular means of transport between the 17,000 islands of Indonesia , where sea connections are cheaper and more available than air routes. But safety standards are not strictly enforced and many ferries are overcrowded.

(Sources: Reuters, Jakarta Post)