WATULIMO (Indonesia), Dec 18: More than 200 people were feared dead after a heavily overloaded boat packed mostly with Afghan and Iranian asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia en route to Australia, rescuers said on Sunday.

Australia’s government called the sinking “a terrible tragedy”, but came under pressure from campaign groups which said its tough approach to refugees was partly responsible for such disasters.

The fibreglass boat had a capacity of 100 but was carrying about 250 people when it sank on Saturday, 40 nautical miles off eastern Java, in heavy rain and high waves, Indonesian officials said.

Thirty-three survivors were plucked from the shark-infested waters, officials said, after the vessel sank along a well-worn — and occasionally lethal — route from Java to Australia’s remote Christmas Island.

Officials said there was little hope of finding any other passengers alive.

“We sent out five boats and three helicopters but no survivor or body was sighted. It’s unlikely they were washed up on islands as the closest shore is 40 miles away,” district search and rescue official Kelik Purwanto said.

Mr Purwanto said the accident was the “worst disaster involving migrant boats” to date.

“If we find no survivor, then this is by far the largest loss of life,” he added.

One survivor, 17-year-old Afghan student Armaghan Haidar, said he was sleeping when a storm came up and began to rock the boat.

“I felt water touching my feet and woke up. As the boat was going down, people were panicking and shouting and trying to rush out,” he told AFP ashore.

“I managed to swim out and hang on to the side of the boat with about 100 others. (There were) about 20 to 30 others with life jackets, but another 100 people were trapped inside,” he said.

Survivors were floating in the sea for six hours before fishermen rescued them, survivors and officials said.

Survivors said that most of the passengers came from Afghanistan or Iran, and they had paid agents between $2,500 and $5,000 to seek asylum in Australia.

Others claimed to be Iraqi, Pakistani, Turkish or Saudi nationals, and that their papers were lost at sea.

Haidar, the Afghan student, said he flew from Dubai to Indonesia and boarded a boat in West Java.

“We want to go to Christmas Island and live a better life in Australia,” he said. “There is nothing in Afghanistan. There’s a lot of terrorism. We couldn’t study, go to college, find jobs. There’s no future for us there.”—AFP