Indonesia continues search for at least 129 missing after ferry capsizes, 6 bodies recovered

BANJARMASIN, Indonesia (AP) — The search is continuing for at least 129 people missing after a ferry overturned in bad weather in Indonesia 's Java Sea on Sunday.

At least 108 people were rescued and the bodies of six passengers were recovered as the search operation expanded around the vessel’s last known position.

The ferry, with more than 240 people on board, was traveling from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, on Borneo Island, officials said.

The captain had reported rough seas with waves up to 3 meters (10 feet) before issuing a distress call, saying the ship was listing, said I Putu Sudayana, who heads the Banjarmasin Search and Rescue Office. Authorities later received information indicating the vessel had overturned.

The rescue agency in Banjarmasin said it received a report two hours after contact was lost with the Virgo Transport 8 at about 2 a.m. Sunday.

A rescue ship was headed to the vessel's last known position, the agency said, and by Sunday afternoon authorities were deploying teams supported by a dozen vessels, including four navy ships, and two helicopters.

Initial information indicated the vessel’s last known position was in the Java Sea, about 148 kilometers (92 miles) from Banjarmasin. The ship's manifest said it was carrying 243 people — 213 passengers and 30 crew members — although it is common in Indonesia for the number of passengers to differ from the manifest. The vessel was also transporting 89 vehicles.

Sudayana, who is coordinating the search, said search teams, assisted by nearby tugboats and other passing vessels, had rescued 107 people and recovered six bodies by Sunday afternoon.

The 119-meter (390-foot) Virgo Transport 8 ferry was built in Japan in 1987 and operated there until last year before being sold to the current Indonesian operator, PT Virgo Karya Shipping.

Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said aerial searches showed the ferry was floating upside down and had not sunk. Rescuers were concentrating search efforts around the overturned ferry, he told reporters Sunday.

Videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency on Sunday showed an overturned ferry floating in choppy waters during a helicopter search operation. Separate footage captured exhausted survivors disembarking from a rescue ship at a port in Banjarmasin, while injured victims were carried on stretchers before being taken by ambulances to nearby hospitals.

Hundreds of relatives gathered at a command center in Banjarmasin's Trisakti port, awaiting word on family members believed to be aboard the ferry. Many anxiously checked passenger manifests and rescue lists as authorities continued searching for survivors.

“I was shocked when I saw my uncle’s name on the passenger list,” said a woman who goes by a single name, Bunga. “But I felt relieved after officials told me he had been rescued.”

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where ferries are a common method of travel. Disasters occur regularly, with weak safety enforcement often blamed.

At least 211 people were rescued from an Indonesian ferry that caught fire last month in rough seas near the Indonesian tourist island of Bali, while one person was found dead and four others remained missing. The incident happened less than two weeks after another Indonesian ferry, the Mutiara Sentosa 2, caught fire off the main island of Java, with the loss of at least five people.

Sunday’s accident comes just four days after a fire that gutted a passenger ferry in the Philippines killed at least 76 people, with at least 10 others still missing.

Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Fadlan Syam in Jakarta and Edna Tarigan and Andi Jatmiko in Pontianak, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

In this aerial image taken from video released by Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), the bottom of passenger ferry Virgo Transport 8 is seen above the water after it overturned in bad weather in the Java Sea, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (BASARNAS via AP)

In this aerial image taken from video released by Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), the bottom of passenger ferry Virgo Transport 8 is seen above the water after it overturned in bad weather in the Java Sea, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (BASARNAS via AP)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, rescuers wheels a survivor of a sinking ferry on a stretcher upon arrival at a port in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Iman Satria)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, survivors receive medical treatment after a ferry sank in bad weather in the Java Sea, at a port in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Iman Satria)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, rescuers carry a survivor on a stretcher after a ferry sank in bad weather in the Java Sea, upon arrival at a port in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Iman Satria)

A woman loses consciousness upon learning that the name of a relative is on the passenger list of a ferry overturned in bad weather in the Java Sea, at the rescuers command center in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Iman Satria)

People look for the names of their family members on a passenger list after a ferry overturned in bad weather in the Java Sea, at the rescuers command center in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Iman Satria)

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff was reelected Tuesday to a second term, holding a key seat for Democrats by defeating Republican Rep. Mike Collins in a race that catapulted the Senate’s youngest member to the forefront of his party’s national stars as it looks to stymie President Donald Trump in his final White House years.

Ossoff, 39, began the cycle as a top Republican target and the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state Trump carried in 2024. But from the start, the senator ran as an aggressive Trump critic, with blistering critiques of “a failed president” that became a staple of voters’ social media feeds across the country.

He became a fundraising juggernaut, pulling in more than $100 million and sparking speculation about a potential 2028 presidential bid to succeed the man he said has used the Oval Office to enrich himself and damage the U.S. political and economic system.

“Corruption in American politics runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump,” Ossoff said during the campaign. “It’s not just the money that’s corrupted our politics. It is a moral corruption, the cynical indifference of powerful people.”

For Trump, Ossoff’s victory is a notably bitter confirmation of his decline toward lame duck status. Trump endorsed Collins for the Republican nomination in a state where the president anchored his false claims that his 2020 defeat was rigged.

But the two-term congressman, first elected echoing Trump’s election lies, never found momentum. He struggled to raise money, navigate his alliance with the president and defend against his ties to white nationalists and an unresolved House ethics investigation.

Collins told supporters Tuesday night that it had been an honor to serve under Trump, who he called the best president of his lifetime. “The results may not be what we wanted tonight, but y’all that’s OK,” he said.

It had been a blistering campaign with Ossoff hammering Collins repeatedly as a “bigot,” emphasizing the congressman’s past social media posts, his onetime chief of staff’s communications with white supremacists and white nationalist advocacy from Collins’ son-in-law.

“If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club,” the senator said, referring to the late civil rights icon’s role in Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights March in 1965.

Collins insisted he had always denounced racism and antisemitism, but the onslaught left him largely unable to land counterattacks that Ossoff was too liberal for Georgia.

“No one has ever asked or held Jon Ossoff accountable for any of his votes,” Collins said, accusing the senator of supporting open borders, allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, and voting “100% of the time with Bernie Sanders,” the democratic socialist senator from Vermont.

Most Georgia voters, about two-thirds, say Ossoff is not “too extreme,” according to The AP Voter Poll. That included most independents and about 3 in 10 Republicans.

Ossoff was first elected in 2020, defeating Republican Sen. David Perdue in a runoff held the day before Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol with hopes of stopping Democrat Joe Biden’s certification as president-elect. Ossoff’s fellow Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock, won a special election at the same time, both breaking historical barriers: Warnock as Georgia’s first Black senator, Ossoff as its first Jewish senator.

Warnock won reelection in 2022 with a campaign targeted more at Georgia’s moderate swing voters, reflecting the difference for a Democratic senator running for reelection with Biden in the White House as opposed to Trump. Still, Ossoff’s unabashedly aggressive approach initially struck some Democrats as a gamble. It quickly became a model, with Ossoff holding carefully produced rallies where he delivered his withering critiques of the president as young aides quickly cut video clips that were distributed online in real time.

Ossoff mocked “Prince Don Jr.,” Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s sons and son-in-law, for their international business deals. The senator called for ending the Iran war, rolling back many of Trump’s tax cuts, and blasted the president’s tariffs. He highlighted his stalled legislative proposal to bar members of Congress from trading individual stocks and pitched a constitutional amendment to limit corporate money in campaigns.

The senator also carefully navigated the politics of Israel, saying he values Israel’s security and “the lives of innocent Palestinians.” He has voted for some U.S. military aid to Israel and against other munitions grants. Ossoff said the Israeli military has violated international standards of warfare in Gaza but avoided the question of whether Israel is committing genocide — a charge levied by some on the Democrats’ left flank. Ossoff said that’s a matter for the International Criminal Court to decide.

Ossoff also leveraged the work he’s done for constituents in Georgia, earning endorsements from some local Republican officials in the historically conservative state who said he’s been an effective advocate for hurricane relief, infrastructure investments and other federal funding.

“This is what small men like Donald Trump and Mike Collins will never understand,” Ossoff said as he campaigned, “that our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas and our aspirations and our care for one another.”

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens speaks during an election night event for Democratic Senate candidate Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People watch election results come in at an election night event for Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins speaks to members of the media during a campaign event on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

A supporter of Democratic candidate U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff holds a sign during a campaign event on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Douglasville, Georgia. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins speaks to members of the media during a campaign event on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Democratic candidate U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff speaks during a campaign event on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Douglasville, Georgia. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)