Missing Japanese boat: Ten people confirmed dead

The ten people who were found by rescue workers after a tour boat went missing off Japan's northern coast have been confirmed dead by the coast guard.

The boat, with 26 people on board, went missing off the northern island of Hokkaido on Sunday. Nine people had been rescued earlier, while seven people remain unaccounted for.

The search and rescue operations to find the remaining passengers are still on. The boat was on a three-hour sightseeing trip around the Shiretoko Peninsula. The peninsula is famous for its wildlife; it is also a designated UNESCO world heritage site.

Every year, tourists flock to the region in the hope of spotting whales, sea lions as well as brown bears and birds on its dramatic coastline.

The boat's crew had sent out a distress call saying that its bow had flooded and it was beginning to sink, according to a report in Aljazeera. It was last heard when it informed its operating company that it was sinking.

There were 24 passengers and two crew members on board the boat. Two of the passengers were children. The cause of the incident is still not clear and an investigation is ongoing. However, experts suspect that the boat may have run aground and got damaged.

Japan's Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said that he has instructed officials "to do everything they can for the rescue."

The boat's operator had decided to continue the sightseeing tour despite rough weather on Sunday. Japanese media reported that fishing boats had returned to port before noon because of the bad weather.

The country's transport ministry has also launched an investigation to review the boat operator's safety standards and why they chose to go for the tour amid bad weather. "We will thoroughly investigate what caused this situation and what kind of safety oversight was involved to allow the tour in order to prevent another accident," said transport minister Tetsuo Saito.

According to a report in The Independent, the same boat had met with two accidents last year in May and June. It had collided with an object in May last year and ran aground in shallow waters in June.