Rohingya refugees rescued after a night on hull of capsised boat

An Indonesian search and rescue vessel on Thursday (March 21) located a capsised boat which carried hundreds of Rohingya Muslim refugees. The rescue team pulled the survivors safely who had been standing on the boat's hull.

Around ten individuals had been moved to nearby fishing boats, according to an AP photographer, who was on board the rescue ship. Meanwhile an additional 59 people were being rescued by the Indonesian vessel.

Men, women and children, who were really weak and soaked from the night's rain, wept as the rescue operation started and people were taken aboard a rubber ship to the rescue boat.

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When the small boat overturned off the northernmost coast of Indonesia on Wednesday (March 20), it was unknown how many refugees were on board, the six survivors who were first saved by local fisherman estimated that the number of survivors was between sixty and one hundred.

It was unclear if everyone survived the night by hanging onto the overturned boat or if some had perished from drowning.

Indonesia's rescue team left Banda Aceh city in the Wednesday evening, hours after the capsising and initially faced challenges locating the boat in the choppy waters off the coast.

The rescue team finally found the boat and the survivors about midday on Thursday.

The boat was sailing east when it began to leak, and then powerful currents forced the boat into the west of Aceh, according to Amiruddin, a tribal fishing community leader in the Aceh Barat area. The six rescued claimed that people were still attempting to survive on the overturned boat.

It may be noted, approximately 7,40,000 Rohingya were relocated to Bangladesh afterfleeingthe violent counterinsurgency operation carried out by security forces inMyanmar.

Thousands of people have been attempting to escape congested camps in Bangladesh to neighbouring nations, with Indonesia reporting a sharp increase in the number of refugees since November, prompting it to request assistance from the international community.

Similar to Malaysia and Thailand, Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention outlining their legal protection,so it is not obligated to accept them. But thus far, they have helped refugees in need by offering them temporary housing.

Nearly 4,500 Rohingya, of which two-thirds werewomen and children, left by boat from the refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh and their native Myanmar last year, according to a report by the UN refugee agency. Of those,569died or vanished while travelling across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.

(With inputs from agencies)