Update | Malaysia expands search for five Chinese tourists still missing after boat sinks off Borneo
Three people taken into custody for questioning, including catamaran’s captain and owner, amid concerns the vessel was overloaded
Malaysian authorities on Monday expanded their search area for six people – five of them Chinese nationals – missing since their boat sank in rough seas off Borneo on the weekend.
Sabah provincial police chief Ramli Din said three people, including the boat’s owner and captain, “had been arrested for questioning”, Reuters reported.
Beijing also called for a “fair and objective” investigation into the incident, which killed three Chinese tourists. Twenty Chinese nationals were among 22 people who survived after their catamaran went down near the popular tourist destination of Mengalum Island, off the coast of Sabah on Saturday.
China urged Malaysia to press on with its search and rescue efforts and to keep Beijing informed regularly. “[China has urged Malaysia] ... to find out the truth as soon as possible,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
The initial search area covered 400 nautical square miles but efforts were hampered by bad weather and heavy seas. The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said the search area had been expanded to 1,500 nautical square miles to include waters off Brunei, Xinhua reported.
Vessels, including those of the agency and the Malaysian Navy and a C-130 aircraft from Malaysia’s Air Force had been deployed to take part in the search, while Brunei was also sending a helicopter, the agency said.
An employee with the agency’s rescue team said the cause of the sinking was still being determined. “Overcapacity might be one of the reasons. But we are still collecting information from the passengers and they are still very weak … So we don’t know yet exactly what happened,” he said.
Another official said the catamaran sailed without permission.
In all, 31 people – 28 tourists and three crew – were on board the catamaran but similar vessels used for fishing were supposed to carry eight people at most at a time, Malaysian newspaper Utusan reported.
According to Malaysia’s New Straits Times, there were no radar or communication devices on the missing vessel.
The survivors were taken to hospital in Kota Kinabalu and had no serious injuries, the Malay Mail Online reported. They could not be reached by phone on Sunday, the worker said.
The identities of the tourists have not been confirmed, but mainland media reported that 12 of the travellers booked the one-day boat trip through a Shenzhen agency.
An employee at Langhuaduoduo International Tour Agency, in Shenzhen, told Xinhua that 12 tourists, including seven from Suzhou, in Jiangsu, and five from Guangzhou, had booked the tour online.
A woman relative of one of the Suzhou tourists told the news portal Chinanews.com that her cousin and uncle, as well as five of their friends, had been on the boat that sank.
The woman said she had been in touch with her family on Saturday morning before the boat had sunk.
She wrote on her Weibo microblog on Saturday that the family had set off on a boat to Mengalum Island at about 10am, but it was not until 6pm that the local tour agency called the police after discovering that the boat had not returned. A second boat travelling with the missing catamaran had arrived back safely though, she added.
Additional reporting by Catherine Wong
