A wooden boat with nearly 200 people on board was found drifting off the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island Wednesday, officials said. The boat, with 19 people from Bangladesh and 174 from Myanmar on board, was found at sea by fishermen off Sabang island in Aceh province, local navy commander Yanuar Handwiyono said.Those on board the boat were weak after being adrift for around one week, Handwiyono said. ‘Some 79 passengers are being treated in two separate hospitals in Sabang town for dehydration,’ he said.
All of those on the boat were men and none of them spoke Indonesian or English.
The passengers were believed to be en route to Malaysia ‘to seek a better life’, Aceh police spokesman Farid Ahmad said. The police had referred the boat passengers’ case to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and local immigration authorities, he said.