Taipei:
A Taiwanese fishing boat capsized off the island's north coast on Friday morning after colliding with a gravel ship, leaving all nine fishermen on board missing, officials said.
Six coastguard vessels and a team of rescue divers have been dispatched to the scene of the crash to search for the missing, along with a fleet of fishing boats, including a Taiwanese skipper, four Chinese ships and four boats from Indonesia.
"The water around the venue was full of fishing nets, making the search work by divers very difficult," Tseng Shu-feng, a coastguard official, told reporters.
According to the authorities, the accident happened when the fishing vessel Shih Hui 31 was sailing off Chuwei, a fishing port near Taoyuan city, in the early hours of Friday and collided with the 8,000-tonne gravel ship.
However, officials have yet to provide details about what instigated the crash.