‘Pray for us’: Eyewitnesses reveal first clues about a missing boat with up to 200 Rohingya refugees
Their screams and sobs could be heard from the ailing boat soon after it emerged into view amid the vastness of the Andaman Sea. Crowded on board were tiny babies and children, alongside mothers and fathers begging to be saved.
The passengers were ethnic Rohingya Muslims who had fled surging gang violence and rampant hunger in the squalid refugee camps of Bangladesh, only to find themselves adrift with a broken engine. For a moment, it appeared their salvation had arrived in the form of another boat carrying Rohingya refugees that had pulled up alongside them.
But those on board the other boat — itself overloaded and beginning to leak — knew if they allowed the distressed passengers onto their vessel, it would sink. And all would die.
They wanted to help, but they also wanted to live.
Since November, more than 1,500 Rohingya refugees fleeing Bangladesh in rickety boats have landed in Indonesia's northern province of Aceh — three-quarters of them women and children.
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