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Ferry sinking toll may rise

Officials fear the death toll will rise dramatically from Wednesday’s sinking of a ferry in South Korea. Nearly 300 people are missing, and rescued passengers said they believe most of the missing passengers were trapped below deck when the ferry sank.

SEOUL, South Korea - Nearly 300 people, most of them students, remained unaccounted for Wednesday as coast guard and navy divers continued to search a ferry that sank hours earlier off the southwestern tip of South Korea.

By midevening, four people were confirmed dead, including a high school student and a member of the ferry’s crew. But fears that the sinking could become one of the worst peacetime disasters in South Korea increased as rescued passengers told news outlets that they believed many people had been trapped below deck Wednesday morning.

“We must not give up,” President Park Geun-hye said from the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, which is coordinating the rescue efforts.

Lee Gyeong-og, vice minister of security and public administration, said 160 navy and coast guard divers were working at the scene, but that their operations were hampered by rapid currents and poor underwater visibility.

Among the passengers were 325 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, south of Seoul. So far, 78 of them are known to have been rescued.

The students were on an overnight voyage to Jeju, a popular resort island, where they had been scheduled to arrive Wednesday morning for a four-day field trip and sightseeing.

The Ministry of Security and Public Administration reported that a total of 164 passengers and crew members were known to have been rescued; given the known deaths, that left 287 of the 459 people on the ferry unaccounted for.

Earlier in the day, the ministry had issued different figures, including a much lower estimate for the number of missing; it attributed the mistakes to confusing reports from the scene.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. The South Korean news media cited unidentified passengers as saying that the ship had begun leaning severely after a loud impact. The ship later capsized and sank, with only its tip protruding from the water.

Lee of the security ministry declined to comment on the likelihood of finding more survivors. But a sharp increase in the death toll was feared as ships, helicopters and divers expanded their search, with no immediate results.

The ship sank in waters 104 feet deep, and the water temperature in the area was about 54 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to cause hypothermia after about two hours, officials said.



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