At least 370 people, most of them illegal immigrants, drowned in a shipwreck off the Indonesian island of Java last Friday, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration said yesterday. Another 44 people survived, among them an eight-year-old child.
The ship left Java last Thursday with more than 420 people on board, principally Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, Pakistanis and Algerians. But it got into trouble the next day, sinking within minutes of the captain's order to abandon ship.
Last August, 433 would-be immigrants, most of them Afghans, were rescued by a Norwegian cargo ship at Australia's request and spent eight days at sea as Canberra refused to set them down on its Christmas island.
Yesterday Australia was flying about 200 asylum seekers, mostly Iraqis, to the remote Papua New Guinea island of Manus to be processed as part of its policy barring boatpeople from the mainland. Another boat of asylum seekers, remained moored off the island after arriving on Saturday.