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JAKARTA, Monday (Reuters) An Indonesian ferry packed with more than 200 passengers sank off the country's volatile eastern city of Ambon, leaving five people dead and 73 missing, a government official said on Monday.

Local government spokesman Martin Luther Djari said 127 passengers were being treated in three hospitals in Ambon, the main city of the Moluccas islands, while rescuers were searching for those missing after the vesssel sank on Sunday night.

"Up until now, we don't know what caused the ferry to sink because we are still trying to search for the victims," Djari said by telephone from Ambon, 2,300 km (1,400 miles) east of Jakarta.

Djari said all the passengers were Muslims, but insisted the sinking was purely an accident and had nothing to do with more than three years of Muslim-Christian unrest in the Moluccas, which has killed more than 5,000 people.

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