UN agencies fear about 70 missing or dead from capsized Rohingya refugee boat

MEULABOH, Indonesia (AP) —

About 70 Muslim Rohingya refugees are feared missing or dead from a boat that made a grueling sea voyage from Bangladesh and sank off Indonesia’s coast this week with 75 survivors, U.N. agencies said.

A statement issued jointly by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, and the International Office for Migration, or IOM, said they were “extremely concerned about the scale of potential loss of life,” saying that accounts from survivors indicated about 150 people originally were aboard.

That likely would have included a crew of about five people, who apparently abandoned the vessel and whose whereabouts are unknown. Two survivors told The Associated Press on Friday that the captain and four crew abandoned the boat for another one when the refugee vessel started to sink.

Indonesian fishermen raised the alarm about the stricken vessel Wednesday when they started rescuing its passengers, and an Indonesian search and rescue ship on Thursday pulled remaining people from the capsized hull about 22 kilometers (14 miles) off the western coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province.

The U.N. joint statement did not specify the exact number of people believed lost, but a website maintained by UNHCR said 75 people were “reported dead or missing” from a boat whose details match the one that capsized Wednesday.

“If confirmed this would be the biggest loss of life so far this year,” said the statement, referring to a steady stream of boats carrying Rohingya seeking to escape crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

There has been a notable increase in Rohingya refugee arrivals in Indonesia over the past year. The 2,300 refugees who arrived in 2023 were more than the previous four years combined, the