Seventeen Lebanese among twenty people at least, mostly children, drowned Friday, and scores are missing after an Australia-bound boat carrying Middle Eastern asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia.
Seventeen Lebanese among twenty people at least, mostly children, drowned Friday, and scores are missing after an Australia-bound boat carrying Middle Eastern asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia.
Twenty-five people were plucked to safety but about 75 were unaccounted for after the boat carrying people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen went down off the main Indonesian island of Java, police said.
Warsono, a police official in Cianjur district on Java, said the bodies were discovered floating in an estuary on Friday morning.
Lebanese citizens from several north towns, including Qubeit. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the accident.
A spokesman for the Indonesian search and rescue agency said that four of its boats, along with fishing boats, had earlier been searching for the missing.
Sources told Al- Manar that the Lebanese on board the ship were 19, 3 of them survived. However, death toll upped later to 17.
A Lebanese Foreign Ministry source told Al-Manar that the Chargé d'affaires at the Lebanese embassy in Indonesia, Joanna Maria Azzi, is following up the incident.
Azzi indicated that the search for survivors is ongoing, pointing out that the boat was carrying about 80 people.
Lebanese Presidency declared that President Michel Sleiman is following up the subject and instructed officials to follow up and take the necessary measures.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Ambassador Wafiq Rahimi, and asked him to make the necessary diplomatic communications regarding the issue of the Lebanese who were on board the ship.
Warsono said that the boat was believed to have been carrying 120 people when it went down and had been heading for the Australian territory of Christmas Island.
They had departed from the fishing town of Pelabuhan Ratu, in the district of Sukabumi, on the south coast of western Java, he said.
