MMEA identifies 24 of 31 people in capsize of catamaran off Sabah

The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency has identified the 22 survivors and two of the three dead in the capsize of a catamaran carrying Chinese tourists off Sabah on Saturday that has also left six missing.

In a statement issued here today, MMEA said 20 of the survivors were Chinese tourists and the other two were the crew of the boat that capsized while heading from Kota Kinabalu to Pulau Mengalum with 28 tourists and three crew on board.

MMEA named the tourists who survived the mishap as Yan Yan Xin (male, 50 years old), Fan Li Xia (male, 40), Yan Si Yi (female, 17), Shen Hao Tian (male, 17), Yang Yao Ru (female, 24), Wang Xian Zhang (female, 48), Cao Dong Tue (female, age not given), Wei Yin (male, age not given), Lu Guo Hang (gender and age not given) and Li Feng (female, 39).

Chen Xin Jian (female, 23), Her Hai Min (male, 22), He Zi Hao (female, 20), Guo Shun Ke (male, 48), Tan Ting (female, 31), Zeng Cui Can (male, 55), Liu Jin Can (male, 31), Liu Juan (female, 32), Liu Fei Tong (male, 32) and Chen Xi (femaile, 11).

The two crew who survived are from Sabah, and have been identified as Sharizal Salian, 25, the skipper, and Aman Abdul, a 38-year-old Filipino who holds an IMM13 immigration travel document.

The MMEA identified two of the three dead tourists as a 46-year-old woman He Run Yuan and a man, Zhang Xioa Kun, whose age was not given.

The survivors among the tourists were brought in a fishing vessel to the Kota Kinabalu Marine Police jetty here at 1.45am today.

The two crew, who were rescued by a tourist boat skipper and a companion who joined the search and rescue (SAR) mission, arrived in Kota Kinabalu yesterday afternoon.

The boat is believed to have capsized at about 10am on Saturday after being hit by strong winds and huge waves an hour after it left the Tanjung Aru jetty here for Pulau Mengalum, a tourist attraction about 56km northwest of Kota Kinabalu.

Six others, five of them tourists and one a crew, are still missing and the search and rescue mission is on to locate them.

The survivors were brought to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital here this morning. The situation was calm, with the presence of several police personnel.

However, a small group of people, believed to be family members of some of the survivors, appeared to be irritated by the press photographers and gestured angrily for them to leave the hospital area. -- Bernama