Boat sinks off Australian coast

02/11/2009| IslamWeb

A search for more than 20 passengers is under way after a boat sank far off the Australian coast.

Brendan O'Connor, the Australian home affairs minister, said a merchant ship that responded to a distress call had rescued 17 people from the Indian Ocean on Sunday and was continuing to search for about 25 more.

A spokeswoman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) said it had "grave concerns about the safety of those who are still in the water, given they've been in there for some time now".

About 40 people were believed to be on board the boat when it went down near the Cocos Islands some 2,000km northwest of the Australian coast and about 1,300km south of Indonesia.

O'Connor also said Amsa's Rescue Co-ordination Centre received a distress signal reporting that a ship had a hole in its hull and was taking on water in rough seas.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the chief of the Australian Defense Force, told the Australian Associated Press that a Taiwanese trawler had been first to get to the scene late on Sunday night.

"When the first ship got there this vessel was still intact," he said.

"Somehow or other during the process of the interaction between the ship and the trawler, and also the stricken vessel, there's been a capsize," he added.

By the time the merchant ship, the LNG Pioneer, arrived, the boat had already sunk, Houston said.

Asylum seeker surge

The Australian newspaper cited sources as saying that the vessel was almost certainly carrying asylum seekers, but O'Connor said it was too early to say if that was the case, stressing that efforts were focused on the rescue mission.

The sinking does come, however, as Australia is seeing the biggest stream of asylum seekers in seven years, a surge the government blames on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the end of Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war.

About 35 boats carrying about 1,770 asylum seekers have arrived in Australian waters this year.

Seventy-eight Sri Lankan asylum seekers are currently refusing to leave an Australian customs boat off Indonesia.

And up to 250 Sri Lankans caught on a boat en route to Australia are refusing to leave their ship anchored off Java.

The government dismantled tough immigration and asylum laws after its 2007 election win, closing down detention centers in small Pacific island countries and saying that detention would only be used for security.

But it has increased ships and aircraft patrolling the remote north coast to intercept boats before they reach Australian soil.

Australia has also continued processing refugees at a detention centre on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, even boosting capacity there by hundreds of beds.

PHOTO CAPTION

File photo shows an Australian naval ship.

Al-Jazeera