“The search ended on Thursday. All Rohingya refugees on top of the boat yesterday have been rescued,” Muhammad Fathur Rachman, an official from the search and rescue agency in Aceh, said through a spokesperson.
The search ended because there was no list of passengers, he added.
Survivors estimated there were “around 150 people on the boat”, West Aceh fishing community secretary-general Pawang Amiruddin told AFP by phone on Wednesday.
Those included the group of 69 who were found off Aceh Province on Thursday and six others who were rescued by fishermen a day earlier.
Survivors indicated many more may be missing, according to local fishermen and officials.
But rescuer Rachman said there was “no additional information that we received about missing persons, and there is no manifest of the boat”.
“Our analysis is the boat cannot hold 150 people.”
A protection associate for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Faisal Rahman, told AFP that one of the survivors said “the boat took 151 people – once the boat capsized, approximately around 50 people (were) maybe missing and passed away”.
Source: CNA
