April 14, 2012
MATARAM, Indonesia (AFP) - Indonesian authorities said Saturday they had found a boat reported missing en route to Australia and that the dozens of asylum seekers it was carrying were believed to have fled.
Authorities had been searching for the boat since the mostly Afghan asylum seekers on board made a distress call to Australia late Wednesday, saying they were in rough seas and their boat was sinking.
Refugee advocates alerted Australian authorities, who passed on the information to Indonesian officials.
Indonesian authorities located the missing vessel late on Friday, even though the boat had apparently reached Lombok island two days earlier.
Officials and residents told AFP on Saturday that the asylum seekers had fled after landing on Lombok, which lies just to the east of the popular resort island of Bali.
"People in Lombok informed us that they saw the boat arrive on the shore on Wednesday, and that people came ashore and ran off," said Nanang Sigit, a search and rescue official in West Nusa Tenggara province.
He said authorities found the boat on Friday night.
Refugee advocates in Australia had said they had been in frequent phone contact with people on board the boat until 0600 GMT Friday. They said the vessel was carrying about 60 mostly Afghan asylum seekers and was in distress.
"The accounts of the community on Lombok and the people on the boat don't match up," Sigit said.
