SEOUL: South Korean officials indicated as many as 293 people were still unaccounted for after a ferry carrying 459 passengers and crew capsized off the south coast on Wednesday.

As the government retracted an earlier announcement that 368 people had been rescued, the Maritime Ministry said it could only confirm 164 had been brought to safety.

“The rest are unaccounted for,” a ministry spokesman told AFP.

He also said the number of passengers and crew had been revised down to 459 from the 477 initially reported.

Two people were confirmed dead as the vessel capsized within two hours of sending a distress signal at 9:00am (0000 GMT).

Lee Gyeong-Og, the vice minister of security and public administration, said the inflated figure for the number of rescued had resulted from confused information arriving from multiple sources.

The ferry, identified as the Sewol, was carrying about 470 passengers, including the students and teachers, en route to Jeju island, about 100 km (60 miles) south of the Korean peninsula.

It sent a distress signal after it began to list badly.

Photos broadcast on television showed the ferry tilted over 45 degrees on the port side with helicopters flying overhead, and then fully capsized with only its stern visible.

The ferry, bound for the southern resort island of Jeju, send out a distress signal at 9:00 am (0000 GMT) with passenger testimony suggesting it may have run aground.

“We heard a big thumping sound and the boat stopped,” one passenger told the YTN news channel by telephone.

“The boat is tilting and we have to hold on to something to stay seated,” the passenger had said.

The 6,825-tonne ferry, which had sailed out of the western port of Incheon on Tuesday evening, ran into trouble some 20 kilometres (13 miles) off the island of Byungpoong.

It was carrying a total of 476 passengers and crew, of which 325 were high school students on a trip to Jeju island -- known as “South Korea's Hawaii” and one of the country's most popular tourist destinations.

Og said a total of 34 naval, coastguard and civilian vessels were involved in the rescue operation, along with 18 helicopters.

Og said President Park Geun-Hye in a personal message “ordered us to make efforts not to leave a single casualty”.

The ferry manifest included 150 cars.