March 5, 2006

A Japanese jet ferry has crashed into a whale on Sunday off Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, leaving eleven passengers with injuries, reports say.

All injured passengers have been transported to a local hospital by another ship, coast guard officials say. They had suffered light traumas and grazes. The condition of the whale, however, is still unknown.

At the time of the accident about a hundred people were on board the ferry. The vessel had to make an emergency stop after the collision because it could no longer be navigated at high speed. This was the ferry's second such crash in the past month.

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