40 dead, 16 missing as tourist boat sinks in Thailand

Divers on a rubber raft retrieve a body during a search operation in the water off Phuket, Thailand, Friday, July 6, 2018. Thai divers scoured the wreckage of a boat with Chinese tourists that sank in a storm off the resort island of Phuket. (AP Photo)

(Updated, 5:13 p.m., July 6, 2018)

PHUKET, Thailand —The Harbour Department announced at 1.26 p.m. (local time) on Friday that 40 passengers of the ill-fated Phoenix dive boat were confirmed dead in the sinking on Thursday.

Rescuers continued to comb the sea around Phuket for the remaining 16 missing Chinese tourists, said the department in a statement.

Forty-nine people have been rescued, it added. Most of the recovered bodies had not yet been sent ashore to be held at Vachira Phuket Hospital.

Many had been found trapped inside the boat.

The Phoenix dive boat was carrying 105 passengers – 93 tourists and 12 boat crew and tour guides – when it sank in the Andaman Sea near Phuket on Thursday.

Divers scoured the wreckage Friday of a boat with Chinese tourists that sank in a storm off Thailand’s southern resort island of Phuket, officials said.

The nationalities of the others killed were not immediately known.

Some of the bodies were found by divers who entered the wreck Friday and others were floating in the water, said navy official Narong Aurabhakdi.

The boat was carrying 105 people, including 93 tourists, 11 crew and one tour guide when it toppled in 5-meter (16-foot) -high waves on Thursday evening. At least 12 of the injured were hospitalized.

Another boat also overturned off Phuket on Thursday afternoon, but all 42 on board were rescued.

The accidents came as rescuers, also led by Thai navy divers, struggle to extract 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in the country’s far north, where they’ve been trapped since June 23.

Jin Yilin, consul-general of the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, said a delegation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry is on the way to Thailand.

Images on Thursday showed rescued people in large rubber life rafts, with fishing boats and churning seas in the background. The survivors were shown being lifted from the rafts and sitting in life jackets amid ropes on the deck of what appears to be a fishing trawler.

As the seas calmed Friday, divers were transporting the bodies of the dead, including at least one child, from smaller boats to a larger ship taking part in the search effort.

Severe weather including heavy rain and winds were forecast until Tuesday. Phuket Gov. Norraphat Plodthong said officials would consider whether to ban boats from going to sea during strong winds.

Thai PBS television reported late Thursday that weather had forced 12 boats with 263 passengers in all to stay docked at Racha island, a popular diving spot about an hour’s boat ride from Phuket.

They said they were providing food, shelter and water to the people, and if the weather did not clear, larger boats belonging to the navy would be sent to retrieve them.

The Thai incidents came after an overloaded boat carrying illegal Indonesian immigrants capsized in bad weather off Malaysia’s southern Johor state late Sunday, killing 10 and leaving nine missing. With a report from ANN / The Nation/ac/dcpl