JAKARTA, Indonesia — Rescuers battled high waves Sunday as they searched for 200 asylum seekers missing and feared dead after their overcrowded ship sank off Indonesia’s main island of Java. So far, only 33 people have been plucked alive from the choppy waters.
Two were children, ages 8 and 10, found clinging to the broken debris of the boat five hours after the accident Saturday.
“It’s really a miracle they made it,” said Kelik Enggar Purwanto, a member of the search- and-rescue team, as horrifying accounts emerged of the disaster.
Nearly 250 people fleeing economic and political hardship in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey were trying to reach Australia in search of a better life when they ran into a powerful storm 20 miles off Java’s southern coast Saturday.
After being slammed by a 15-foot-high wave, the fiberglass ship — carrying more than twice its capacity — broke apart, survivors said, disappearing tail first into the dark waters.
Soon after, a local fisherman, Jambe, spotted several dark dots from his tiny wooden fishing vessel and went to investigate. He and his three- member crew were horrified at what they found: more than 100 hysterical and exhausted people clinging to anything that floated.
Survivors immediately started racing toward them.
“They were all fighting, scrambling to get into my boat,” Jambe, 25, told The Associated Press, adding that there was room for only 10.
In the end, he managed to get 25 on board, many of them injured and all begging for water to drink. Those left behind were screaming and crying.
“I’m so sad. . . . I feel so guilty, but there were just too many of them,” said Jambe, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. “I was worried if we took any more, we’d sink too.”
Indonesia, a sprawling nation of 240 million people, has more than 18,000 islands and thousands of miles of unpatrolled coastline, making it a key transit point for smuggling migrants.
