22 RI crew missing as ship stranded
22 RI crew missing as ship stranded
Agencies, Tokyo
Twenty-two crew members from an Indonesian ship went missing on Tuesday after their ship was believed to have hit rocks in the stormy Seton Inland Sea in southwestern Yamaguchi prefecture during typhoon Songda, the Japan Coast Guard said.
According to a spokesman at Japan Coast Gurad's Tokuyama office in Yamaguchi prefecture, a crewman of the 6,315-ton Tri Ardhiant made a radio call to the Coast Guard's Fukuoka office near Yamaguchi around 10:10 a.m. (8:10 a.m. in Jakarta) for help.
According to the official, the crewman said that all crew were abandoning the ship that was being battered by strong winds.
"We have not found the ship yet," the coast guard's official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
"We of course are most concerned about the fate of the crew, but the bad weather is hampering our search," said another spokesman for the 6th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters.
Three bodies were located nearby, but had not been identified and were not yet linked to the storm, local police said.
The Indonesian freighter departed from the city of Yokohama in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo on Saturday and was on its way to Hikari in Yamaguchi prefecture, the Coast Guard official said.
Stormy seas also sank another ship, Blue Ocean, a Cambodia- registered freighter, carrying 18 Russian crew in western Hatsukaichi harbor. Two died and three were still missing, a Hiroshima Coast Guard Bureau spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
A 62-year-old man was buried in a mudslide in southern Kagoshima prefecture (state). He was rescued and taken to a hospital, but later died, local police spokesman Masayuki Tajima said.
The powerful typhoon Songda pounded western Japan on Tuesday, knocking out power to more than a million households, forcing thousands to evacuate and killing at least seven people. Twenty- five crew members from two cargo ships were missing.
Across the country 580 people were injured, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Typhoon Songda was the record seventh typhoon to hit Japan this year - exceeding the six storms that lashed the country in 1990, the Meteorological Agency said.
The typhoon was located 500 kilometers northwest of Tokyo as of 7 p.m. (5 p.m. in Jakarta), moving northeast at a speed of 43 kilometers per hour in the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
In South Korea heavy rains earlier lashed the southern provinces as the typhoon skirted Jeju island.
A 60-year-old man was reported missing while trying to anchor a ship in the southern port city of Busan. Tens of thousands of boats took shelter in Busan and other ports and flights and ferry services were canceled in the region.