It was an “unspeakable tragedy,” Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said on Wednesday.
“I think all of our hearts are ripped apart by things like this when they happen,” he said in Sao Paulo after learning of the accident off Christmas Island.
Australian officials said 27 refugees including children, died early Wednesday after their wooden boat shattered in violent seas off the island.
Christmas Island residents were woken by sounds of screaming as the passengers cried out for help.
Witnesses said the boat was crowded with passengers, mostly families, and a number were lying listless and ill on the deck as it splintered.
Teacher Robyn Stephenson said the jagged shore made it impossible for victims to swim to safety. “They were being washed into the cliffs, the really sharp cliffs,” Stephenson said.
Another resident, Michael Foster, watched in horror as women and children screamed for help in the churning seas.
“They had life jackets on them but the water was just pushing them up … and throwing them toward the rocks,” Foster said. “It was a pretty horrible situation.”
“There were children in the water. There was one very small child in a life jacket floating face down for a very long time ... clearly dead,” said local shop owner Simon Prince. “It’s something I’m not going to forget very quickly.”
Prince said locals gathered life jackets and rushed to the sheer limestone cliffs to offer help, but strong winds blew the flotation devices back onshore.
The terrified group drifted for about an hour after losing engine power and only one man managed an “incredible leap” to safety before the surging waves smashed the rickety vessel apart on the rocks, Prince said.
“Once it hit the rocks it shattered into pieces,” said local councillor Kamar Ismail. “I heard people screaming for help, we just said to them ‘We can’t, we can’t do much’, we could throw them life jackets, that’s all.”
Prime Minister Julia Gillard canceled her holiday following the incident and issued a short statement to say it would be “some time before there is a full picture of what has happened”. “The government’s focus and absolute priority now is on rescue, recovery and treatment of those injured,” she said.
A source at Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency said Australian authorities had not alerted them about the departure from Indonesia of the vessel.
Australia, with its superior radar, satellites and intelligence, frequently shares information with Indonesia about suspected people-smuggling boats in its waters.
Christmas Island, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean some 2,650 km northwest of Perth, has Australia’s main immigration detention center and is where all asylum seekers arriving by boat are taken.
Canberra is pushing for a regional processing center to be built in East Timor in the hope of deterring refugees from making the perilous sea journey to Australia, which has claimed hundreds of lives in the past decade.
