CANBERRA, Australia: Australia has ended a three-day search for survivors among more than 90 Afghan asylum seekers missing since a fishing boat carrying them capsized between Australia and Indonesia.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority says the air and sea search for survivors ended late yesterday and that all of the missing are now presumed dead.
No survivor has been found since the day of the tragedy on Thursday, when 108 men and a 13-year-old boy were rescued from the Indian Ocean.
Searchers will now focus on recovery of bodies. The safety authority said six bodies had been retrieved yesterday, and more had been seen by planes searching for survivors.
The boat is believed to have originated in Sri Lanka and to have been carrying mostly Afghan asylum-seekers.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said earlier that the critical 36-hour search window had passed and conditions had steadily deteriorated, with the situation “looking grimmer by the hour.”
“There may still be people alive, but we’re passed that window,” Clare told ABC Television.
“I’ve been on the phone to Border Protection Command. Their advice is that they’ve now instructed the men and women out in the search and rescue area to now identify people that have been perished and retrieve those bodies.” The capsize is the latest in a series of refugee boat disasters in the Indian Ocean in recent years, as rickety, overloaded vessels packed with desperate migrants struggle to reach Australia.
Most boats originate in Indonesia, though there has been a spike in attempts from Sri Lanka, with navy sources in Colombo saying that people-smugglers had been encouraged by the failure of a so-called people swap with Malaysia.
That deal, under which Canberra would have taken 4,000 registered refugees in exchange for 800 asylum-seekers, was scotched by the High Court of Australia last year, forcing an easing in the government’s mandatory detention policy.
Though they come in relatively small numbers by global standards asylum-seekers are a sensitive political issue in Australia, dominating 2010 elections due to a record number of boat arrivals.
The latest accident is the worst since 2001, when a crowded people-smuggling boat called the SIEV X sank, killing 353 of the more than 400 people on board.
Some 50 refugees were killed in a horror shipwreck on the cliffs of Christmas Island during a violent storm in December 2010, including 15 children — one a baby just three months old.
More than 200 males seeking asylum in Australia were aboard the Indonesian fishing boat.
