Survivor recalls horrors at sea

Survivor recalls horrors at sea

A Lebanese asylum seeker described on Saturday how she lost two children and her husband when their overcrowded boat sank off Indonesia, leaving at least 22 dead and scores still missing.

Ms Nazime Bakour, 32, groaned in pain when asked how she felt about her loss. She fought back tears as her eight-year-old son, the only other survivor in her family, slept beside her in a medical centre in southern Java.

"I am happy he is alive. My husband and two (other) children are dead. They were three and seven (years old)," she told AFP.

"I had to swim. My husband swims very well, but the boat broke and hit his head," she said, recalling the boat being struck by a massive wave and breaking into pieces.

She saw her surviving son in the water and managed to grab him before they were rescued by fishermen.

"We left Lebanon because it's not safe for my children. My husband wanted to go to Christmas Island because of the children."

The estimated 120 asylum seekers on board were at sea for five days, she said, before their food and water supplies ran out and the two Indonesian crew admitted they were lost, deciding to turn back to Java island, from where they started.

Other survivors said they had raised the alarm with Australian authorities, passing on their exact location at least 24 hours before their boat sank, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

But immigration minister Scott Morrison contradicted the reports. He said the initial reports suggested the boat had foundered in Indonesian waters, and Australian authorities were phoned on Friday morning, not Thursday morning, as reported by survivors.

One survivor, Abdullah, from Jordan, told the Sydney Morning Herald: ''We made a mistake. The children didn't make a mistake, just rescue the children.''

He added: ''I called the Australian embassy. For 24 hours we were calling them. They told us just send us the position on GPS, where are you. We did, and they told us: 'Okay, we know... where you are. We'll come for you in two hours.'

''We waited two hours. We waited 24 hours, and we kept calling them. We told them: 'We don't have food, we don't have water for three days, we have children, just rescue us'."

But nobody came.

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.

Most of the passengers came from the northern Lebanese region of Akkar but there were eight from Eritrea (of whom five died), six from Iraq (one of whom died) and one Iranian family from which only one child survived.

The groups were brought together in Jakarta by people smuggling agents, to whom they had paid A$10,000 (S$11,700). Survivors said their smuggler's name was Abu Saleh, and that he had been arrested.

Indonesian rescuers resumed the search for survivors on Saturday with a sole helicopter as strong waves kept search boats beached.

 


Get The New Paper for more stories.

This website is best viewed using the latest versions of web browsers.