22 drown when boat sinks off coast of Indonesia
More than 70 Middle Eastern asylum-seekers bound for Australia were unaccounted for
At least 22 people, mostly children, drowned and scores are missing after an Australia-bound boat carrying Middle Eastern asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia yesterday in rough seas, police said.
Twenty-five people were plucked to safety but more than 70 were unaccounted for after the boat carrying people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen went down off the main Indonesian island of Java, police said.
It was the first deadly asylum boat accident since Tony Abbott became Australia's prime minister this month and came just days before he visits Indonesia for talks likely to focus on his tough policies aimed at deterring boatpeople.
One Lebanese man escaped from the sinking boat by swimming to an island - but he believes his eight children and pregnant wife were killed, an official in Lebanon said.
Hussein Khodr called people in his home village of Kabiit "and told them that the boat sank at dawn, when waves destabilised the vessel", said Ahmad Darwish, the local government head in the northern Lebanese village.
Darwish said it was not the first time that people from the poor region had sought to reach Australia by boarding rickety asylum-seeker boats in Indonesia.