Indonesia will stop searching for hundreds of people missing from a sinking ferry nine days ago in waters off Sulawesi island in central of the country, head of the rescue team said on Tuesday.

According to manifest, more than 220 passengers and crews of Teratai Prima ship are still missing and could have been dead, but officials said that many other passengers were on board without registration, which could bring the total number to more than 300.

The 700-ton ship was sunk on Jan. 11 when it had sailed over 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast of western Sulawesi and went down in five minutes after a 3-meter wave hit the ship. The ship was on route from Parepare town of South Sulawesi province to Samarinda city of East Kalimantan province.

"We will halt the search this evening," head of South Sulawesi province rescue team Wahyudi Suparman told Xinhua over phone from the island.

According to the procedure, the search must be carried out for 7 days and could be prolonged.

"We have searched in line with the procedure and have extended it for three days," he said.

After searching for nine days, not many victims of the ferry were found. Wahyudi said that many of them might be trapped inside the ferry.

So far, rescuers have found 34 survivors including the captain and 4 out of 17 crews, and nine dead bodies have been found, the head of port administrator at Parepare of the island Yetasa Sarita told Xinhua over phone from the port.

"According to the survivors, many passengers were sleeping soundly when the ship sank as it was after midnight," said Wahyudi.

"Besides, the ship doors were small and so do the windows, which make the hundreds of passengers be difficult to escape should they wake up," he said.

Wahyudi said that based on information from survivors and relatives as well as analysis of documents, he predicted the missing victims could be more than 300 people. Indonesian police has declared the captain of the ferry Sabir as suspects due the charge of ignorance which cause the loss of hundreds of lives. The captain dismissed warning from the meteorology agency of dangerous weather, according to transport ministry.

Indonesian Transport Minister Jusman Syafi'i Djamal said last week that a preliminary investigation showed the ferry capsized after it was smashed by huge waves, but there would be an investigation into why the captain set sail despite warnings. The National Transport Safety Committee would probe whether possible overloading of passengers could have contributed to the sinking.

Police also investigate additional people, including the port administration, to see if they had any involvement in the disaster.

Ships are a major form of transportation in Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with more than 17,000 islands. Poor enforcement of safety regulations and overcrowding causes accidents that claim hundreds of lives each year.

In December 2006, a crowded Indonesian ferry broke apart and sank in the Java Sea during a violent storm, killing more than 400 people.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2009)