Indonesia’s Navy submarine with 53 people on board went missing during a military exercise north of the resort island of Bali.
The country’s military chief, Hadi Tjahjanto, said on Wednesday that the KRI Nanggala 402 was participating in a training exercise when it missed a scheduled reporting call. The vessel is believed to have disappeared in waters about 60 miles (95km) north of Bali, he said.
Indonesia’s Navy is searching for a missing submarine and is seeking help from neighboring Australia and Singapore in the hunt, Indonesian authorities say.
The KRI Nanggala-402, a German-made submarine, lost contact during a torpedo drill in the Bali Strait — a stretch of water between the islands of Java and Bali that connects to the Indian Ocean and the Bali Sea.
The submarine asked for permission to dive, or submerge, at 3 a.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) before losing contact, it said. The statement added that an oil spill was seen in aerial surveillance near the dive point, around 7 a.m. local time.
