Death toll from sunken ferry rises to 281 by today

Five more bodies were recovered from the sunken ferry Sewol yesterday.

Raising the death toll to 281 and lowering the number of those missing to 23, one month after the ship sank off South Korea's southwest coast.

A joint team of government and civilian divers retrieved the five bodies shortly after it resumed search operations in the afternoon.

Divers searched the sunken ferry for about an hour overnight, but no bodies were found any more. In the morning, unfortunately strong currents prevented the team from going underwater.

Yesterday's search was expected to focus on a kitchen and cabins on the third deck, other cabins on the fourth deck and the pilothouse on the fifth deck.

The 6,825-ton Sewol sank off the southwestern island of Jindo on April 16, carrying 476 people on board. Most of those dead or missing are students from a high school near Seoul on a school field trip to the southern resort island of Jeju. The ferry, which departed from Incheon, west of Seoul, sank about two hours away from the resort island.