By Sandra Kenneth
Rescuers from Vietnam and China are engaged in a joint search operation for 17 people missing after a Vietnamese cargo ship carrying 62 crew members sank during severe weather in the contested South China Sea.
The vessel, identified as the Khoi Nguyen 18, encountered distress on Saturday evening and subsequently sank near Fiery Cross Reef—known as Yongshu Reef in China—in the Spratly archipelago.
As of Sunday afternoon, 45 survivors had been rescued from the waters, according to a statement released by Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang.
“Vietnamese search forces, supported by Chinese rescue teams using ships and helicopters alongside local vessels, managed to rescue 45 people by 12 noon on Sunday,” Hang said, adding that active search and rescue efforts remain underway for the remaining missing crew.
China’s state news agency Xinhua reported that a Chinese vessel first detected distress signals from the endangered cargo ship late Saturday. Search operations were immediately launched, involving six Chinese vessels, a rescue helicopter, and a Vietnamese vessel operating in the area.
According to maritime tracking site MarineTraffic, the Khoi Nguyen 18 is a Vietnamese-registered cargo vessel measuring just under 70 meters in length.
The vessel sank in a highly contentious zone of the strategic waterway, which Vietnam refers to as the East Sea. Fiery Cross Reef is controlled by Beijing but remains subject to overlapping territorial claims by Hanoi and Manila.
While China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea—a stance rejected by an international tribunal ruling—competing claims are also maintained by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan over the resource-rich area.
