Indonesia Highlights: Time is Running Out for Efforts to Find Missing Indonesian Submarine | 454 Indians Entered Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport in April 2021| Philippine, Thailand Leaders No-Shows

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – Indonesia’s hopes of finding one the missing navy submarine KRI Nanggala-402 is fading fast, as Indonesian naval vessels and their foreign counterparts have yet to find the vessel, more than three days after it went missing off the northern coast of Bali.

Immigration officials in Indonesia’s biggest airport, Soekarno Hatta International Airport, revealed that more than 450 Indian nationals headed to Indonesia after the number of cases in the country surged.

And ASEAN’s chances to form a united front to resolve the crisis in Myanmar following the country’s military coup last February is thrown into doubt, as the leaders of the Philippines and Thailand failed to show for the Association’s summit on the crisis in Jakarta this Saturday.

This and more on Indonesia Highlights:

KOMPAS/CYPRIANUS ANTO SAPTOWALYONO The Indonesian Navy Submarine KRI Nanggala-402 enters the Indah Kiat docks in the port city of Cilegon in Banten province in this file photo. The KRI Nanggala-402 has gone missing during exercises off the northern coast of Bali on Wednesday (21/4/2021)

Time is Running Out for Efforts to Find Missing Indonesian Submarine

The Indonesian military or TNI’s hopes of finding the Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala-402 is fading fast, as the vessel’s oxygen reserves is estimated to run out on Saturday, April 24.

Indonesian Navy vessels and their foreign counterparts scouring waters off the northern coast of Bali have yet to find the German-made attack submarine as of 3 in the morning of Saturday, April 24. 

The Indonesian military is currently focusing its hopes to find a breakthrough in the search on the Celukan Bawang Bali maritime gap.

“We have found nine points that might give away [KRI Nanggala-402’s] location 40 kilometers south of Celukan Bawang, where we found oil spills as well as strong magnetic fields,” said TNI spokesman Major General Achmad Riad on Friday.

Indonesian Navy vessels mustered to search for KRI Nanggala-402, among them the KRI Dr. Soeharso-990, KRI Rimau and the brand new submarine KRI Alugoro-405, will be joined by the Singaporean Navy submarine rescue ship MV Swift Rescue.

The United States also ordered the US Air Force reconnaissance P-8 aircraft to search for the KRI Nanggala-402, which is thought to sink to a depth of 600 to 700 meters. The US aircraft is thought to arrive in the early hours of Saturday, April 24.

The KRI Nanggala-402 was manufactured in 1979 at the Howaldt Deutsche Werke (HDW) shipyards in the port city of Kiel in the then-country of West Germany. The submarine has been part of Indonesia’s arsenal since 1981.

The aging ship was also upgraded at South Korean shipyards run by the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, South Korea between 2009-2012.

Source:

https://go.kompas.com/read/2021/04/24/074802374/time-is-running-out-for-efforts-to-find-missing-indonesian-submarine?page=all#page2. 

AP PHOTO/RAJESH KUMAR SINGH People stand in queues to cast their votes during local elections in Kunvarpur village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Thursday, April 15, 2021. India reported more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases, skyrocketing past 14 million overall as an intensifying outbreak puts a grim weight on its fragile health care system. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)