The captain of an Indonesian ferry which sank killing 29 people rejected claims of overcrowding Monday and blamed a freak storm for the disaster, as officials launched an investigation.
The search for survivors from the Dumai Express resumed for a second day off Karimun island, near Singapore, with dozens of people feared lost at sea or trapped in the wreck at the bottom of the Malacca Strait.
With the official toll standing at 29 dead and 245 rescued, officials arrived at Karimun to try to piece together what caused the latest in a litany of ferry disasters in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands.
The 147-tonne vessel's capacity was 273 passengers and crew, but local police said more than 400 people could have been on board. Two survivors told AFP its decks were packed with undocumented passengers.
Captain Johan Napitupulu rejected the allegations and said he had no warning he was sailing into a massive tropical storm when he left Batam island on Sunday morning. Indonesia's catalogue of ferry disasters.
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