The passenger ferry is engulfed in thick black smoke, listing heavily to the right.
Terrified passengers, wearing life jackets, gather on the side free of smoke to await rescue.
Some passengers jump into the sea to escape the flames.
A passing vessel approaches and rescues them.
[Grab on, grab on. Slowly, take it easy]
The burning passenger ship was en route from Surabaya, the second-largest city in Indonesia's East Java province, to Makassar on Sulawesi Island.
Among the approximately 270 passengers and crew members on board, 5 people were killed and over 40 are missing.
With rescue operations beginning only four hours after the fire broke out and taking about six hours to return to the departure port, the rescued passengers looked utterly exhausted.
[Missing person's nephew: After hearing about the accident, I kept trying to reach my uncle, but his phone is turned off.]
Witnesses stated that an explosion was heard just before the fire broke out, and the blaze started from a truck loaded on the vehicle deck.
[Ahmad Abdul Karim / Surviving Witness: When we went down to the vehicle deck, two vehicles were already on fire. The flames spread quickly, carried by the wind.]
The ferry was carrying about 180 vehicles and heavy construction machinery.
In Indonesia, which consists of some 17,000 islands, ferry accidents occur frequently, such as the sinking eight years ago in 2018 of a passenger ship carrying about 200 people, which resulted in 167 deaths.
Reported by Kim Minpyo | Video edited by Yoon Tae-ho | Produced by SBS Digital News
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