Story highlights At least 23 died when the ferry caught fire Sunday morning local time 
 
 Captain questioned over reports he abandoned ship 
 
 (CNN) Police have detained the captain of a ferry that caught fire off the coast of Indonesia's capital, killing at least 23 people, amid allegations he was the first to jump ship. 
 
 Divers are still searching for 17 people still missing from Sunday's fire. 
 
 "We have detained the captain of the boat, and are now taking his statement," Jakarta's maritime police director, Hero Hendrianto Bachtiar, told CNN Indonesia. 
 
 He said that three crew members and two port authority staff were in police custody. 
 
 At a press conference, Antonius Tonny Budiono, director general for sea transportation at the Indonesian ministry of transport, addressed reports that the captain was the first to leap off the Zahro Express ferry when it caught fire. 
 
 Read More ||||| A man sits near the wreckage of a ferry that caught fire off the coast of Jakarta, at Muara Angke Port in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017. The vessel was carrying more than 230 people from Jakarta's... (Associated Press) 
 
 A man sits near the wreckage of a ferry that caught fire off the coast of Jakarta, at Muara Angke Port in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017. The vessel was carrying more than 230 people from Jakarta's port of Muara Angke to Tidung, a resort island in the Kepulauan Seribu chain, when it caught... (Associated Press) 
 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A search resumed Monday for 17 people reported missing after a ferry fire off the coast of Indonesia's capital that left at least 23 dead, officials said. 
 
 The victims died Sunday when the vessel, Zahro Express, carrying more than 260 people from a port near Jakarta to Tidung, a resort island in the Kepulauan Seribu chain, caught fire, officials said. Most of the passengers were Indonesians celebrating the New Year holiday, according to local media reports. 
 
 Dito, an official from the Jakarta Search and Rescue Agency, said at least five ships and a number of speedboats and rubber boats were deployed in the search. 
 
 Of the 224 passengers who were rescued, 32 were being treated at three hospitals, said Dito, who uses a single name. 
 
 Seply Madreta, an official from the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency, said the fire gutted about half the vessel, and that 23 bodies had been recovered. 
 
 Twenty bodies that were found inside the vessel were burned beyond recognition and were transferred to a police hospital for identification, said Col. Umar Shahab of the Jakarta police health department. 
 
 Witnesses told MetroTV that the fire broke out about 15 minutes after the ferry left the port of Muara Angke. 
 
 The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Some passengers told local media that they first saw smoke coming from the ferry's engine. 
 
 The director for sea transportation, Tonny Budiono, said the initial suspicion was that the fire was "most probably caused by a short circuit in the engine room." 
 
 He told a news conference the short circuit might have led to the fuel tank exploding. 
 
 TV footage showed people in the water with the ferry in flames in the background. A woman in the water can be heard screaming "Ya Allah! Ya Allah!" or "Oh God! Oh God!" 
 
 Another woman told the TV station that she and other passengers were rescued by a small boat. 
 
 Despite the high number of people who were rescued, the ferry's manifest showed that only 100 were registered as passengers, along with six crewmen, said Denny Wahyu Haryanto, head of the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency. He said the vessel's captain was under police investigation over the incident. 
 
 Ferry accidents are common in Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic nation, with more than 17,000 islands. Many accidents are blamed on lax regulation of boat services. 
 
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 This story has been revised to correct the spelling of the official's surname to Madreta, instead of Madreto.
– Four crew members who survived the New Year's Day ferry disaster in Indonesia have been arrested, including the captain, who was allegedly the first to jump ship when the Zahro Express caught fire off the coast of Jakarta. "A captain who abandons ship first is no captain at all," an Indonesia transport ministry official said, per CNN. "A captain's obligation is to be the last person off the ship, after all the passengers have been evacuated." Two port authority employees have also been arrested over the incident, which left at least 23 passengers dead and another 17 missing. The AP reports that another 224 passengers were rescued, though the ship's manifest lists only 100 passengers. At least 32 of those rescued were hospitalized.