Sri
Lanka's navy soldiers assist an injured Myanmar national to a navy ship
in Galle February 17, 2013. The navy said it rescued rescued 32 Myanmar
nationals who were stranded after their wooden vessel begun to sink in
the deep seas off the eastern coast. Picture taken February 17, 2013.
Sailors rescued 31 adult males and a boy on February 16 when their
damaged wooden ship began to sink about 250 nautical miles off Sri
Lanka's southeastern coast, Sri Lanka's navy said on its website
(www.navy.lk).
"They said they had carried food and water for only one month and they
had been in the sea for two months after the ship engine stalled,"
police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody told Reuters. "Their captain and
97 others have died due to dehydration and starvation. They also said
they had thrown the dead bodies into the sea."
The survivors said they were aiming to seek asylum in Indonesia and
Australia and identified themselves as Muslims from a border village
between Myanmar and Bangladesh, Jayakody said, without elaborating.
Fifteen survivors are still in hospital in southern Sri Lanka while 17
of them have been discharged and detained after appearing in court, he
said.
An estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims live in Myanmar but are
officially stateless. The Myanmar government denies them citizenship,
regarding them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, which does not
recognise them either.
The United Nations estimates about 13,000 boat people, including many
Rohingyas, fled Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh in 2012, a sharp
increase from the previous year.
On February 2, the Sri Lankan navy rescued 127 Bangladeshis and 11
Myanmar nationals in an overcrowded wooden vessel that had begun to
sink 50 nautical miles east off Sri Lanka's eastern coast.
The members of this group of 138 people are still in a detention centre near the capital Colombo, police said.
(Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Jason Webb)
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