Near the coast of Myanmar, a huge cargo ship that authorities have been searching for for at least nine years has been located in recent days.
The ship, Sam Ratulangi PB 1600, that sailed under an Indonesian flag disappeared and was considered missing all these years.
Yisrael Hayom reported that the international tracking site that follows ship movements in real time, lost contact with the ship on June 3, 2009 when it was on the coast of Taiwan in the South China Sea. Since then, the great 177-meter-long ship has been missing.
"Our police forces were diverted to a ship that sailed 11 kilometers from the shore by local fishermen who saw it," the paper quoted a Myanmar parliamentarian named Ni Weigun as saying. "The policemen boarded the large vessel and were amazed to find it completely deserted, floating at sea without direction. Even worse, it turned out the ship had been missing for nine years, something even more strange."
Authorities examined information available to them and their latest understanding of the ship was that a Bangladeshi tow truck crew tried to bring the vessel to its homeland for repossession. The crew abandoned ship 80 kilometers from the coast of Myanmar following a sea storm that made it difficult to control.
It appears the ship was towed by an Indonesian crew that discovered it in August, but none of the crew was able to give any clue as to what had happened on the ship before it was found.
