October 29, 2001	Monday	Shaba'an 11, 1422

JAKARTA, Oct 28: Indonesian police said on Sunday that a commercial vessel hijacked last week by about 170 asylum-seekers had been found on an islet off the eastern island of Sumbawa.

A police official from the town of Bima — a district capital of Sumbawa some 1,200 kms east of Jakarta — said locals at a village on the islet discovered the asylum-seekers whose boat had run aground at an inlet on Saturday evening.

“Locals first found the... immigrants on Saturday night. They (asylum-seekers) were trying to find water and food,” said Bima deputy police chief commissioner Ishaka Usman by telephone.

“They wanted to go to Australia but are now on the island (off Sumbawa) under our surveillance. Their boat had engine problems,” he added.

But Usman said the boat’s captain had remained on the vessel and denied it had been hijacked, even though one crew member who fled the ship and was rescued by the Indonesian navy said it had been taken over by Iraqi asylum-seekers.

“But this is still very preliminary information,” he said referring to the denial of the hijacking.

The navy said the boat was hijacked on Wednesday in the Flores Sea somewhere between the Sulawesi island chain and Sumbawa.

Usman said Afghans were also among the 170 on the boat, called the KM Sinar Bontang. It is still unclear how many crew fled the vessel, described as a wooden fishing boat.

The rescued crew member said the boat left the South Sulawesi port of Makassar, some 1,400 kms northeast of Jakarta, on Wednesday.

A Makassar port official said a boat also called the KM Sinar Bontang was recorded as having left port on October 10 and carried no passengers.—Reuters