YAMAGUCHI (Kyodo) -- Three people died when a pleasure boat and a tugboat collided in the Seto Inland Sea in western Japan on Sunday morning, the coast guard said.

The captain of the tugboat made an emergency call around 5:45 a.m., the local fire department said, adding of the four people recovered from the pleasure boat, two men and a woman had died, and the remaining person had suffered minor injuries.

The pleasure boat sank after colliding with the 16-meter-long, 19-ton tugboat off Yamaguchi Prefecture, which had been issued with a dense fog advisory for inland areas on Sunday morning.