Hope ebbs for Indonesia boat disaster survivors

Indonesian rescuers Monday held out little hope of finding any more survivors with over 200 asylum-seekers feared dead after an overloaded boat sank in stormy seas en route to Australia. The weekend disaster looks set to rank as the worst loss of life yet from the sinking of one of the many boats packed with Asian and Middle Eastern migrants who undertake the perilous sea voyage from Indonesia to Australia. Five rescue boats and two helicopters have been deployed to comb Indonesia's far-eastern shores despite bad weather, joined by an Australian navy patrol ship and surveillance aircraft, officials said. "Visibility is really low. Currents are very strong, waves are up to three metres (10 feet) high and it has just started to rain," Kelik Purwanto, a search and rescue official in Trenggalek district, told AFP. "We will continue our search eastwards towards West Timor. It's unlikely we will find any survivors, but we are hoping for the best," he said. The fibreglass vessel had a capacity of 100 but was carrying about 250 migrants -- mostly Afghans and Iranians -- when it sank on Saturday, 40 nautical miles off eastern Java. Thirty-three survivors were plucked from the shark-infested waters on Saturday and taken to Blitar city on Sunday for formal identification, officials said. "Immigration officials will find out who they are and their motive for coming here," Siswanto, who heads the East Java provincial disaster management agency, said. Survivors interviewed by AFP said they were heading to Australia's remote Christmas Island when their boat was hit by a storm and capsized. They were floating in the sea for six hours before fishermen rescued them. The migrants were said to include Pakistanis, Iraqis, Turks and Saudis. They said they had paid agents between $2,500 and $5,000 to seek asylum in Australia and claimed their UN documentation papers were lost at sea. Thousands of asylum-seekers head through Southeast Asian countries on their way to Australia every year and many link up with people-smugglers in Indonesia for the dangerous voyage on ramshackle boats. Christmas Island is a favoured destination for people-smugglers, lying closer to Indonesia than Australia. Nearly 50 would-be migrants are believed to have died in wild seas during a shipwreck there in December 2010. Australia's Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare on Monday said Indonesia had requested help from Australian police to investigate people-smugglers, who he said had showed a "callous disregard for human life". "In addition to sending our military assets to help this morning, the Indonesians have also asked for our assistance with policing," he told ABC radio, without saying how many officers would be sent. "I think it is a recognition of the fact that this is a regional problem and it requires a regional solution... "The only way to tackle this effectively (is) if you've got police forces in Australia and in Indonesia, police forces across the region working very closely together," he said. However, Canberra has suffered numerous setbacks in its attempts to enforce a regional strategy on the problem including an August rebuff from Australia's High Court to its plans to institute offshore processing of asylum-seekers. The Australian newspaper said an associate of Afghan human-trafficking kingpin Sayed Abbas was believed to be responsible for sending the latest boat on its ill-fated journey. It reported that Indonesian authorities were investigating Haji Ismail, also known as Sayed Azad or Sayed Jalal, as a prime suspect after his name was supplied to investigators by survivors.