A 19-year-old Indonesian woman died and 172 people were rescued after a passenger ferry caught fire off Bali while travelling toward the neighbouring island of Lombok, a search-and-rescue official said.
Muhamad Hariyadi, an official on Lombok, said a navy ship and other vessels evacuated those aboard. The rescued group included two Australian tourists. An AFP photographer at Lembar, on Lombok's western coast, saw one person brought ashore in a body bag.
Kiky Okta Pradika, a 25-year-old survivor, said he took a life jacket and jumped into the water with several other passengers. He told reporters that hours passed before assistance arrived. Hariyadi said people were transferred to at least three vessels, including a navy ship and another ferry that responded during the early morning.
Search-and-rescue boats remained at the scene, while a helicopter surveyed the area from above. Hariyadi said no passengers or crew remained on the burning ferry. There was no immediate official information about injuries or missing people, so the rescue total should not be read as a complete passenger manifest or a finding that everyone survived without injury.
The fire was the second fatal ferry incident reported in Indonesia within days. Five people had died the previous week when a ferry caught fire off Java. The supplied report did not identify a cause for either blaze or say whether investigators believed the two incidents were connected.
Indonesia depends heavily on maritime links because the country comprises more than 17,000 islands. Ferries serve residents, commerce and tourists, but serious accidents recur. The report cited weak safety standards and unpredictable weather as common factors in maritime disasters generally; it did not establish either as the cause of this fire.
Another ferry carrying more than 70 people sank near Selayar, south of Sulawesi, in the preceding month. Four bodies were recovered, and the search ended with 14 people still officially missing. That separate incident added to concern about passenger-boat safety but involved a sinking rather than an onboard fire.
For the Bali-Lombok journey, the immediate emergency phase appeared to have shifted from evacuation to accounting for those aboard and examining the vessel. Officials had confirmed one death and the rescue of 172 people, but had not released the ferry's name, its certified capacity, a passenger-and-crew total or an explanation for the blaze. Those details would be needed to determine whether everybody was accounted for and what safety failures, if any, contributed. Rescue boats remained deployed and aerial surveillance continued after officials said nobody was left on the burning ferry.
