JAKARTA, Indonesia — Rescuers searched for survivors today after a wooden ship carrying about 250 asylum-seekers, many of them from the Middle East, sank off Indonesia’s main island of Java. So far, only 33 people have been rescued.
Four fishing boats were searching for the more than 200 missing passengers, but bad weather and 13-foot-high waves were hampering the efforts, said Lt. Alwi Mudzakir, a maritime police official who was heading the rescue operation.
“We fear that a large number of victims will not be rescued,” he said.
Police blamed Saturday’s accident on overloading, telling Indonesia’s official Antara news agency that the vessel appeared to have been carrying more than twice its capacity.
Mudzakir said some of those who were rescued told authorities that they were determined to seek asylum in Australia.
He said about 250 asylum-seekers — mostly from Afghanistan, but also from Iraq, Iran and Turkey — were taken by four buses from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, on Thursday by an unidentified group. The group promised to get the asylum-seekers to Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, without legal immigration documents.
The Associated Press
