Weeping, weak and soaked, dozens of Rohingya refugees rescued after night on hull of capsized boat

MEULABOH, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian search and rescue ship on Thursday located a capsized wooden boat that had been carrying dozens of Rohingya Muslim refugees, and began pulling survivors who had been standing on its hull to safety.

An AP photographer aboard the rescue ship said 10 people had been taken aboard local fishing boats and another 59 were being saved by the Indonesian craft.

Men, women and children, weak and soaked from the night’s rain, wept as the rescue operation got underway and people were taken aboard a rubber dinghy to the rescue boat.

It was unclear how many refugees were aboard the small craft when it capsized off of Indonesia’s northernmost coast on Wednesday, with six survivors initially rescued by local fishermen estimating between 60 and 100 people.

It was unclear whether all managed to cling to the capsized craft overnight or whether some had drowned.

Indonesia’s search and rescue team only left Banda Aceh city in the evening Wednesday, many hours after the capsizing, and initially had difficulty locating the boat in the choppy waters off the coast.

It finally found the boat and the survivors about midday on Thursday.

Amiruddin, a tribal fishing community leader in Aceh Barat district, said those rescued indicated that the boat was sailing east when it started leaking and then strong currents pushed it toward the west of Aceh. The six said others were still trying to survive on the capsized craft.

About 740,000 Rohingya were resettled in Bangladesh to escape the brutal counterinsurgency campaign by security forces in their homeland of Myanmar.

Thousands have been trying to flee overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to neighboring countries with Indonesia seeing a spike in refugee numbers since