GENEVA, Oct 22: At least 370 people, most of them illegal immigrants, drowned in a shipwreck off the Indonesian island of Java last Friday, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration said on Monday.

Another 44 people survived the tragedy, among them an 8-year-old child, IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy added.

He said the ship had left Java early last Thursday with over 420 people on board, principally Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, Pakistanis and Algerians, but got into trouble the next day, sinking with minutes of the captain giving the order to abandon ship.

Twenty-one of the passengers had been set down on an island shortly after departure, at their request, and were not on board when the ship sank, Chauzy said.

“The death toll from this shipwreck is still not exactly known,” he said.

The information provided to the IOM came from accounts from the survivors, who had been taken to Bogor, in southern Java.

Indonesia is the last stepping stone for illegal immigrants trying to reach Australia.

Last August, 433 would-be immigrants, most of them Afghans, were rescued by a Norwegian cargo ship at Australia’s request and spent eight days at sea following Canberra’s refusal for them to be set down on its Christmas island.

The group was later put on to an Australian navy ship and taken to the small Pacific island of Nauru, where they were processed as refugees.—AFP