Australia’s prime minister today denounced people smugglers who set refugees adrift in rickety boats as “scum” and pledged to step up efforts to thwart them, after one vessel exploded at sea and killed three people.
The small wooden fishing boat was carrying 47 Afghan asylum seekers and two crew when the blast happened off Australia’s coast yesterday
The death toll could rise, because two people were still missing at the explosion site hundreds of miles from the coast, and five others were on life support in an Australian hospital, prime minister Kevin Rudd and hospital officials said.
Mr Rudd said his government would take a tough line against people smugglers, who are paid by would-be immigrants to transport them to a new country. In Australia’s case, the asylum seekers often come by boat from Indonesia.
“We are dedicating more resources to combat people smuggling than any other government in Australian history,” Mr Rudd told reporters in Sydney, adding that people smugglers were the “the scum of the earth”.
“People smugglers are the vilest form of human life because they trade on the tragedy of others,” Mr Rudd said. “We’ve seen this lowest form of human life at work in what we saw on the high seas yesterday.”
The explosion happened as the small boat - which had been apprehended by the Australian navy a day earlier - was being escorted by the navy to the remote Australian territory of Christmas Island, where the government processes refugee applicants.
The boat sank after the blast and the survivors were loaded on to navy ships; 31 injured people were flown by helicopter to Australian hospitals and the remaining 13 people were taken on a navy ship to Darwin, where they arrived today and were met by police, immigration officials and medical personnel.
Mr Rudd and other government officials have refused to speculate on the cause of the explosion, but the premier of Western Australia said yesterday the boat was doused with fuel before the explosion.
AP