Associated Press in Manado – An intensive search yesterday failed to find any more survivors of a ferry disaster, as the few who were rescued described the ship's final moments.

On Sunday, 10 people were found alive floating in the sea and clinging to one another. At least another 481 passengers and crew were still missing from Thursday morning's sinking of the Cahaya Bahari, a wooden ferry packed with Christians fleeing bloody fighting with Muslims in the Maluku Islands.

But aerial sweeps of the area yielded no new sightings yesterday. "No one has been found today," said Commander Djoko Sumaryono, who is heading the sea and air search.

A fishing boat plucked the survivors, aged from 10 to 29 years, along with one dead body from the water close to Karakelong Island, 200km northeast of Manado on Sulawesi Island, in Indonesia, on Sunday.

Survivors recounted how huge waves swamped the overcrowded ship in a fierce storm during a 300km voyage to Manado from the Malukus, a corner of the Indonesian archipelago where violence between Muslims and Christians has killed almost 3,000 people of both faiths in the past 18 months.

Reny Sopakua, 29, said when the ship was starting to go down, fear turned to anger as passengers realised that there were not enough life jackets for everyone. "People started threatening each other with knives," said Ms Sopakua, who was separated from her infant child in the chaos that followed.

Meanwhile, a navy supply ship that docked on Sunday at the port in Ternate, a town in North Maluku province, found 200 armed Muslim extremists hiding aboard a commercial vessel.

Officers aboard the KRI Multatuli, which is part of the flotilla looking for survivors, said they despatched a boarding party to search a suspicious-looking vessel berthed at the dock.