Forty-eight believed dead in Australia refugee boat disaster

Forty-eight believed dead in Australia refugee boat disaster: SYDNEY: Australia Monday said about 48 people died in last week’s horrific asylum-seeker boat sinking, the country’s worst such disaster in years, but warned the exact toll may never be known.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the “best estimate” was that around 90 people were on the wooden fishing boat which shattered on rocks at remote Christmas Island last Wednesday in a storm, as helpless residents looked on.
Only 42 people were rescued before the search for survivors was called off late Friday.
“We may never know the precise number but the advice to me is that the best estimate at present is that there were around 90 people on the boat,” Gillard told reporters, quoting police figures.
“That does mean of course that we are still not able to account for around 18 people.”
Thirty bodies have already been retrieved after the accident, including a number of babies and children.
“We may never know absolutely, certainly, how many people were on the boat,” Gillard warned. “We may never know the precise number.”It is the worst tragedy involving the steady stream of asylum-seeker boats bound for Australia since the sinking of the SIEV-X off Indonesia in 2001, when all 353 on board died.


Survivors say the vessel was packed with Iranians, Iraqis and Kurds when it foundered on a rocky outcrop at Christmas Island, some 2,600 kilometres from the Australian mainland and venue for its main immigration detention centre.
The grim task of identifying the victims is underway at the hospital morgue, while police divers have trawled undersea caves in search of more bodies.
Prayer services were also held at Christmas Island’s immigration detention centre — Australia’s largest refugee camp — with a number of inmates mourning relatives and friends lost in the wreck.
Police have interviewed three Indonesian crewmen rescued after the crash and expect to lay charges, though they have declined to comment on whether these will include manslaughter.

One survivor whose husband and young son are missing told the West Australian newspaper the crew instructed them to scream for help to get the attention of residents. However locals were powerless to help and the navy arrived too late to rescue everyone on board.
More than 6,000 refugees mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have arrived in Australia this year on boats from Indonesia, crowding centres to capacity and inflaming debate on Canberra’s tough mandatory detention policy.

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