JAKARTA: At least 17 people, including four children, died after a motorboat sank in choppy waters off the Indonesian island of Java, a government official said on Tuesday.
The 10-metre wooden vessel with 57 people on board was hit by high waves off Sumenep in East Java province on Monday, said Tholib, a spokesman for the search and rescue agency.
Rescue teams saved 39 passengers and are searching for one missing person, he added.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago, has a patchy transportation safety record, with frequent ferry accidents often caused by overcrowding.
Last year, an overcrowded ferry with more than 200 passengers sank in Lake Toba in Sumatra. Eighteen people survived and nearly 200 are thought to have drowned in one of the world's deepest volcanic lakes.
Tuesday's incident followed the kidnapping of a Malaysian and two Indonesian fishermen by Abu Sayyaf gunmen off Sabah state last December.
Last week, Malaysia's new police chief Abdul Hamid Bador acknowledged that the Abu Sayyaf remained a big threat to Sabah due to the state's close proximity to the Philippines. Authorities have imposed curfew in some parts of Sabah and planned to further bolster security.
The US State Department had in April also warned of the threat of kidnappings-for-ransom from both terrorist and criminal groups in the eastern area of Sabah under a new risk indicator. It said in its travel advisory that these groups may attack with little to no warning, targeting coastal resorts, island resorts and boats ferrying tourists to resort islands.