Sumatra boat accident: 11 missing after vessel capsizes near Mentawai

At least 11 people are missing after a boat capsized off Sumatra's Mentawai islands. Photo / Getty Images

At least 11 people are missing after a boat capsized off Indonesia’s western island of Sumatra, a local search and rescue agency said in a statement today.

The vessel reportedly capsized at around 11am local time on Monday as it sailed around the Mentawai islands, an archipelago off the west coast of Sumatra, the Mentawai search and rescue agency said.

Seven of the 18 people on board the boat were rescued, it said.

Rescuers were focusing their search around the location of the accident, said Mentawai search and rescue agency head Rudi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“Our focus is on combing the area around the estimated accident site to find all victims,” Rudi said in a statement.

He did not give a cause for the boat capsizing, but marine accidents are a regular occurrence in the Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, in part because of lax safety standards or bad weather.

On July 3, a ferry sank off the popular resort island of Bali, killing at least 18 people.

In March, a boat carrying 16 people capsized in rough waters off Bali, killing an Australian woman and injuring at least one other person.

In 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Sumatra Island.

– Agence France-Presse