Rescue teams were actively searching Sunday for 23 people still unaccounted for after a Vietnamese cargo ship went down in the South China Sea, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV. Thirty-nine people were successfully pulled from the water following the sinking.
Officials in China’s southern Hainan province identified the vessel as the Khoi Nguyen 18, a cargo ship carrying 62 Vietnamese nationals that got into trouble near Fiery Cross Reef. The ship, registered in Vietnam, measures nearly 70 meters — about 230 feet — in length and has a gross tonnage of 999 tons.
The emergency was first detected on Saturday evening when a Chinese rescue ship, the Nanhai Jiu 115, spotted a distress flare launched from the stricken vessel. The response quickly grew to include six Chinese ships, a rescue helicopter, and a Vietnamese vessel all working together at the scene.
The waters near Fiery Cross Reef fall within the Spratly Islands — a chain of heavily disputed reefs, islets, and atolls that China refers to as the Nansha Islands. The area sits within the resource-rich South China Sea, over which China asserts sovereignty over nearly the entire waterway. Beijing has constructed runways and militarized artificial islands throughout the Spratlys as part of its territorial claims.
Those sweeping claims, however, are challenged by several other nations. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all have overlapping territorial claims in the region.
