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Explosion on asylum seekers' boat

by Red Brick | 3 years, 1 month(s) ago

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Three people have been killed by an explosion on a boat carrying asylum seekers, Australian police have said. The boat was carrying 49 Afghan asylum seekers, and was on its way to a detention centre. Two people from the boat are missing and staff at a Darwin hospital said several more were injured. The vessel, the sixth to approach Australia since January, was being escorted by the navy to the detention centre on Christmas Island. "The vessel was being escorted to Christmas Island so that safety and health checks could be done," Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said in a statement. "Border protection agencies have reported that there has been an explosion or serious fire on board this vessel. "There are reports from personnel on the scene that this incident has resulted in fatalities, serious injuries and that a number of occupants of the vessel are missing," he said. Surge? Six boats carrying more than 250 illegal entrants have been intercepted off or landed on Australia's coast since January. The opposition says this "surge" is the fault of what it calls a softening of the country's immigration policy since Kevin Rudd became prime minister in late 2007. The number of asylum seekers intercepted in all of 2008 was 179. The Rudd government scrapped the widely criticised policy of his predecessor John Howard under which asylum seekers and their children were detained for years in special centres in Nauru or Papua New Guinea under the so-called "Pacific Solution". Asylum-seekers now arriving by boat are held on Christmas Island, but their claims must be expedited, with six-monthly case reviews by an ombudsman now government policy. The BBC's Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant says the Australian government is worried about the rise of people-smuggling from or through the waters of Indonesia. Earlier this week Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told a people-smuggling conference in Bali that the tide of boat people might increase because of the fighting in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and the global economic downturn. The Indonesian government has promised to push through new laws enabling the criminal prosecution of people smugglers. But these have not yet been enacted.
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