A boat with 12 Malaysians, including 10 anglers, reported missing in Pulau Aur waters, off Mersing were found safe yesterday.
The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) detected the boat about 25 nautical miles south-east of Tanjung Sedili, near Kota Tinggi.
“All on board were also reported safe and following that, MMEA mobilised its assets to rescue them and tow their boat to the Tanjung Sedili jetty,” MMEA southern region deputy director (operations) Maritime Captain Saiful Lizan Ibrahim said in a statement, as reported by Bernama.
“The boat was located at 6.15pm by MMEA’s air assets,” he said.
The group had earlier been reported missing when their boat — which left went out to sea on Tuesday — failed to return on Thursday.
Kota Tinggi OCPD Rahmat Othman was quoted as saying that the wife of one of the men on board had lodged a report on Friday evening when she failed to contact her husband.
“The complainant lodged a police report because she was aware of the rough sea conditions and worried about the safety of her husband and the others,” he said in a statement.
Five more police reports were filed by the families of the missing anglers and a joint search and rescue operation — involving the MMEA, the marine police and the Royal Malaysian Navy — was launched yesterday.
