A total of 47 Chinese citizens are still missing after two tour boats sank in waters off the island of Phuket in Thailand, China's foreign ministry confirmed Friday.

Among the passengers in the two boats, 127 were Chinese tourists, two of whom died in the accident, while another 78 were rescued and 47 remain missing, foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said during a press conference.</s>PHUKET, Thailand – Divers scoured the wreckage Friday of a boat with Chinese tourists that sank in a storm off Thailand’s southern resort island of Phuket, as the death toll rose to 21 with about 35 others missing, officials said.

Nine bodies of Chinese tourists were being brought to Phuket, where authorities had already confirmed the death of another Chinese man. The nationalities of the others killed were not immediately known.

Some of the bodies were found by divers who entered the wreck Friday and others were floating in the water, said navy official Narong Aurabhakdi.

The boat was carrying 105 people, including 93 tourists, 11 crew and one tour guide when it toppled in 5-meter (16-foot) -high waves on Thursday evening. At least 12 of the injured were hospitalized.

Another boat also overturned off Phuket on Thursday afternoon, but all 42 on board were rescued.

The accidents came as rescuers, also led by Thai navy divers, struggle to extract 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in the country’s far north, where they’ve been trapped since June 23.

Jin Yilin, consul-general of the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, said a delegation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry is on the way to Thailand.

Images on Thursday showed rescued people in large rubber life rafts, with fishing boats and churning seas in the background. The survivors were shown being lifted from the rafts and sitting in life jackets amid ropes on the deck of what appears to be a fishing trawler.

As the seas calmed Friday, divers were transporting the bodies of the dead, including at least one child, from smaller boats to a larger ship taking part in the search effort.

Severe weather including heavy rain and winds were forecast until Tuesday. Phuket Gov. Norraphat Plodthong said officials would consider whether to ban boats from going to sea during strong winds.

Thai PBS television reported late Thursday that weather had forced 12 boats with 263 passengers in all to stay docked at Racha island, a popular diving spot about an hour’s boat ride from Phuket.

They said they were providing food, shelter and water to the people, and if the weather did not clear, larger boats belonging to the navy would be sent to retrieve them.

The Thai incidents came after an overloaded boat carrying illegal Indonesian immigrants capsized in bad weather off Malaysia’s southern Johor state late Sunday, killing 10 and leaving nine missing.</s>PHUKET, Thailand – Divers scoured the wreckage Friday of a boat with Chinese tourists that sank in a storm off Thailand’s southern resort island of Phuket, as the death toll rose to 21 with about 35 others missing, officials said.

Nine bodies of Chinese tourists were being brought to Phuket, where authorities had already confirmed the death of another Chinese man. The nationalities of the others killed were not immediately known.

Some of the bodies were found by divers who entered the wreck Friday and others were floating in the water, said navy official Narong Aurabhakdi.

The boat was carrying 105 people, including 93 tourists, 11 crew and one tour guide when it toppled in 5-meter (16-foot) -high waves on Thursday evening. At least 12 of the injured were hospitalized.

Another boat also overturned off Phuket on Thursday afternoon, but all 42 on board were rescued.

The accidents came as rescuers, also led by Thai navy divers, struggle to extract 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in the country’s far north, where they’ve been trapped since June 23.

Jin Yilin, consul-general of the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, said a delegation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry is on the way to Thailand.

Images on Thursday showed rescued people in large rubber life rafts, with fishing boats and churning seas in the background. The survivors were shown being lifted from the rafts and sitting in life jackets amid ropes on the deck of what appears to be a fishing trawler.

As the seas calmed Friday, divers were transporting the bodies of the dead, including at least one child, from smaller boats to a larger ship taking part in the search effort.

Severe weather including heavy rain and winds were forecast until Tuesday. Phuket Gov. Norraphat Plodthong said officials would consider whether to ban boats from going to sea during strong winds.

Thai PBS television reported late Thursday that weather had forced 12 boats with 263 passengers in all to stay docked at Racha island, a popular diving spot about an hour’s boat ride from Phuket.

They said they were providing food, shelter and water to the people, and if the weather did not clear, larger boats belonging to the navy would be sent to retrieve them.

The Thai incidents came after an overloaded boat carrying illegal Indonesian immigrants capsized in bad weather off Malaysia’s southern Johor state late Sunday, killing 10 and leaving nine missing.</s>Police in southern Thailand resort of Phuket say at least seven missing as rough seas overturn two tourist boats

PHUKET, Thailand (AP) — Police in southern Thailand resort of Phuket say at least seven missing as rough seas overturn two tourist boats.</s>PHUKET, Thailand: The search for scores of missing Chinese tourists whose boat capsized off Thailand's Phuket island resumed early Friday (Jul 6), with divers poised to scour the sunken hull, the island's governor told reporters.

The Phoenix ran into trouble on Thursday afternoon, when it was hammered by five-metre high waves that had been whipped up by a storm.

The boat, which had left the popular snorkelling spot of Koh Racha to return to Phuket, was carrying 105 passengers, the majority Chinese tourists.

The body of one of the passengers, believed to be a Chinese holidaymaker, was pulled from the sea late Thursday and brought to shore, shortly before the search was called off for the night.

Helicopters, police and fishing boats were deployed early Friday as the rescue mission restarted.

"We will conduct air searches and send divers to check inside the sunken Phoenix boat," Noraphat Plothong said.

"Police investigators said most of the tourists were wearing life jackets," when the boat went down, he added.

Thailand is already in the global spotlight for a dramatic rescue mission in the north of the country, after 12 boys and their football coach were trapped in a cave complex.

Stunned survivors of the boat accident huddled in blankets on a Phuket pier late Thursday.

Some cried while others appeared dazed as they walked around still wearing their life vests.

"Eleven are injured, of these two are in serious condition," the governor added.

The Phoenix was among several boats that appeared to have ignored a severe weather warning in place since Wednesday to take tourists on day-trips to the islands that dot the seas off Phuket.

A Chinese consular official arrived at the operations centre in Phuket to monitor the rescue effort.

Several other vessels hit trouble late Thursday. Initial reports from officials said all of the passengers on those boats were rescued.

But as details dripped through overnight, governor Noraphat said two passengers were still unaccounted for from another stricken ship.

Phuket is a magnet for overseas visitors including Western sun-seekers and huge numbers of Chinese tourists who make up the bulk of the 35 million people expected to visit the kingdom this year.

Thailand has a poor health and safety record and accidents are common on its roads and busy waterways - especially in tourist areas during the monsoon season which is now biting.</s>The boats had gone out to sea despite a severe weather warning.

Somjing Boontham, who said he was the captain of the Phoenix, said he had urged passengers to put on life jackets while crew members frantically lowered lifeboats as huge waves slammed and tilted the boat. Pictures from the scene showed lifeboats carrying up to 20 people, some of them children.

The capsizings came as Thailand has been transfixed by the efforts to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from the flooded Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand.

Wang Xudong, who is with a private search-and-rescue group from China, had been assisting at the cave, but on Friday he was preparing to search for his countrymen lost at sea instead.

“I never expected to be here in Phuket for something like this,” he said. “We had good news at the cave, and I hope we can have some good news in Phuket, too. I want to help out any way I can, either for Thai people or Chinese people.”

The Chinese state news media said a total of 127 Chinese tourists were involved in the two episodes, including 37 people on one boat who worked for a furniture company in Zhejiang. Many of the tourists on the Phoenix were staying at major international resorts on Phuket.</s>Police in southern Thailand resort of Phuket say at least seven missing as rough seas overturn two tourist boats

PHUKET, Thailand (AP) — Police in southern Thailand resort of Phuket say at least seven missing as rough seas overturn two tourist boats.</s>One person was reported dead and 49 were missing after tourist boats keeled over off the coast of Thailand on Thursday, with stormy weather hampering the rescue effort. Officials said at least two boats were lost in this way, with 10 other pleasure vessels stranded at sea.

A yacht called Senerita capsized with 39 of European and Chinese tourists aboard, but all of the passengers were rescued and accounted for, according to officials. Passengers on a different boat, named Phoenix, were not as fortunate.

Governor of southern Phuket Noraphat Plodthong told reporters that 48 people had been saved from Phoenix but another 49 remain missing. Thai authorities suspended the search for the passengers of the larger vessel as night fell on Thursday.

The rescue effort would "start again in the morning," Noraphat added.

Television footage showed the body of one Chinese man wearing a Phoenix life jacket being recovered.

Phoenix was returning to Phuket from the nearby island of Ko Racha when it encountered a storm at about 4 p.m. local time, according to the ship's captain Somjing Boontham.

Somjing said the ship was pounded by 5-meter (16-feet) waves that started flooding the vessel and caused it to slowly keel over. The captain told the media he ordered life rafts to be inflated and instructed passengers to put on life jackets.

"So I sent someone to them to wear life jackets... They were all Chinese visitors — apart from two farang," he said, using a thai slang for westerners.

Thai officials previously stated that the severe weather warning should stay in effect until Tuesday.</s>At least one man died and scores of Chinese tourists went missing after a boat capsized off the popular southern island resort in Thailand. The boat, the Phoenix, was carrying nearly 105 passengers in the Andaman Sea. It was hit by massive waves which prompted it to keel over. The search operation resumed on Friday after helicopters dispatched to the search area. Nearly 49 people are still missing.</s>PHUKET, Thailand (AP) — Thai authorities on Friday evening suspended the search for missing tourists who were on a boat that sank during a storm off the southern resort island of Phuket, as the death toll rose to 33, all of them Chinese nationals.

The search for another 23 people still missing will resume at 5 a.m. Saturday, said Prapan Khanprasang, chief of the Phuket Provincial Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office.

The accident appeared to be Thai tourism's biggest disaster in years, and drew sharp attention from the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok. Visitors to Thailand from China totaled more than 9.8 million people in 2017, constituting the largest share by country of a record 35.38 million foreign tourists in all.

The death toll jumped after the navy sent divers to enter the wreck of the tour boat, which capsized and sank Thursday evening when it was hit by 5-meter (16-foot) -high waves. It was carrying 105 people, including 93 tourists, 11 crew and one tour guide. At least 12 of the injured were hospitalized.

In images Thursday after the sinking, rescued people sat in large rubber life rafts surrounded by churning seas. Wearing life jackets, the survivors were then moved to the deck of what appeared to be a fishing trawler.

As the seas calmed Friday, divers were transporting the bodies of the dead, including at least one child, from smaller boats to a larger ship taking part in the search effort.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of Thailand's military government, expressed his "sympathies and deepest condolences" to the families of the dead.

The government will "exert all efforts to find those still missing and provide support to all survivors of this tragic event," he said in a statement.

Reports in Thai media said police charged the owner and captain of the stricken ship with carelessness causing death and injury.

Chinese Ambassador Lyu Jian had an "emergency conversation" by phone with Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak, the Chinese Embassy said in a statement quoting the envoy calling on Thailand to quickly mobilize an intensive search for the missing and "to tend and make appropriate arrangements for the rescued Chinese tourists, treat and cure the injured and receive family members of the Chinese tourists involved."

Ambassador Lyu said it hoped the cause of the capsizing would be quickly ascertained and asked Somkid to have the relevant Thai agencies closely cooperate with China on the matter.

Fatal accidents among foreign tourists at Thai beaches are not unusual, but normally involve drownings in unsafe swimming areas or accidents involving smaller boats.

Thai officials were rushing to cope with some of the logistics of the aftermath of the sinking.

At the request of Phuket's governor, the Phuket Tourist Association was seeking 80 volunteer Chinese language translators to assist the outgoing Chinese passengers at the provincial airport.

Many of the victims had been on group tours, booked in Phuket and China.

The government of the eastern Chinese city of Haining in Zhejiang province said on its official microblog account that it received a distress alert sent by phone text message from the head of the Haining Haipai Furniture Co. Ltd., from Thailand Friday morning.

It said that 37 of the furniture company's employees and family members had traveled together to Phuket and that on July 5 at around 5 p.m. they encountered the "biggest storm in five years" and they sought the government's help. The group had booked their tours to the islands online on their own, said the posting.

A Chinese tour operator based in the central province of Hunan said on its official Sina Weibo account that three travelers it had booked were missing.

Lazy Cat Travel said it had sent personnel to Phuket to help out its clients, who also included 35 passengers who had to be rescued from another boat that it had chartered that ran into trouble on Thursday. It said that second boat had lost power after being swamped by waves. All on board were returned safely to shore.

The accidents came as rescuers, also led by Thai navy divers, support 12 boys and their soccer coach stranded nearly two weeks inside a flooded cave in the country's far north, and try to determine how and when to extract them.

Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang in Beijing contributed to this report.
At least 33 are dead and 23 missing after two passenger boats capsize off Phuket, Thailand. All are Chinese tourists.