The boat appeared to be trying to land when it broke up Dozens of people are feared to have drowned after a boat carrying suspected asylum seekers crashed into rocks on Australia’s Christmas Island.
Pictures from the scene showed the boat, believed to be carrying Iranians and Iraqis, smashed to pieces.
Witnesses said they could do little to help as the seas were too rough to approach the vessel.
The boat appeared to be trying to land at Christmas Island, where Australia has an immigration detention centre.
The BBC’s Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says he understands that about 70 people were on the vessel and about 40 were rescued.
Most asylum seekers travel with the help of people-smugglers in Indonesia and are generally intercepted by the Australian Navy well before they reach Christmas Island. One of the curious things about this episode is that the boat managed to get so far without being intercepted. Another boat was intercepted just a couple of days ago and the navy vessel that is bringing those suspected asylum seekers to shore has been unable to come into harbour because the weather conditions are so foul.
Christmas Island is Australia’s offshore detention centre, currently housing more than 2,000 people. It is absolutely at breaking point. The government has had to open up detention facilities on the mainland, which it has always tried to avoid. It is a very politically sensitive issue. It was a big issue in the election here a couple of months ago – the opposition parties saying the government had been too soft on asylum seekers, who were encouraged to try to reach Australian shores.
Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan, standing in for Julia Gillard while she is on holiday, confirmed that some people had died but could not say how many.
“A number of people have been rescued, but sadly some bodies have been retrieved.”
A spokeswoman for the Royal Flying Doctor Service said 30 people were being treated for injuries and three of them were critically ill.
Residents of Christmas Island said they were alerted to the disaster by the sounds of screaming from the shore.
“We threw ropes over the cliffs and we must have thrown in a couple of hundred life-jackets,” one resident was quoted as saying by the West Australian newspaper website.
“About 15 or 20 people managed to get into the jackets but there are bodies all over the water,” he said.
“There are dead babies, dead women and dead children in the water. The swell is unbelievably big.”
Another resident, Simon Prince, told Associated Press: “The engine had failed. They were washing backward and forward very close to the cliffs here, which are jagged limestone cliffs, very nasty.
Acting PM Wayne Swan: “Sadly some bodies have been retrieved”
“When the boat hit the cliff there was a sickening crack. All the people on board rushed to the land side, which is the worst thing they could do.”
Australian media said residents alerted the police at 0545 (2045 GMT on Tuesday).
Australia Customs launched two inflatable boats to rescue survivors.
One witness, documentary maker Philip Stewart, said he arrived at the shore about an hour after the boat first hit the rocks and it was already in pieces.
He said he saw about seven survivors but conditions were too rough for rescuers to get close enough to help.
“They were waving and shouting and screaming for help,” he told Australia’s ABC News.
Christmas Island residents struggled to rescue people from the rugged shore “They were desperate, by that stage they had been in the water for an hour already.
“They hung on for as long as they possibly could and each one of them was eventually thrown off into the sea on to the rocks.”
He said he saw one person picked up while the others drowned.
Australia has seen an increase this year in asylum seekers arriving by boat.
There are currently almost 3,000 people in the Christmas Island processing centre waiting for officials to rule on their cases.
The island is in the Indian Ocean, about 1,200km (750 miles) north-west of the Australian mainland and about 300km south of Indonesia.
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