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.