into the sea on Sunday, having been refused entry to Australia, were still adrift off Australia last night. They had reportedly sabotaged their own vessel in a fresh bid to force a rescue by the Australian navy.
The boat carrying 186 people, including 54 children, was drifting around 30 miles from Christmas Island off Australia's north-west coast, outside Australian territorial waters.
The Australian navy was monitoring the vessel while the Australian prime minister, Mr John Howard, the defence minister, Mr Peter Reith, and the immigration minister, Mr Philip Ruddock, were considering options.
Australia is in the middle of an election campaign and Mr Howard's recent decision to refuse entry to the Tampa refugees and to subsequent boats of asylum-seekers has been welcomed by the Australian public, making him the hot favourite to be returned to office on November 10th.
But if a vessel carrying refugees were to sink with loss of life, having been turned away, public opinion would undoubtedly change.
One option open to the government is to take the refugees to the South Pacific island of Nauru where almost 1,000 boatpeople, refused entry to Australia, have been transferred in recent weeks.
The refugees could also be brought ashore at Christmas Island which has recently been excluded from Australian territory for migration purposes. The refugees could be brought ashore there and would still have no right to claim asylum in Australia.
On Sunday when the ship was refused entry, a number of adults threw children overboard to force their rescue in the hope the entire group would then be brought to Australia. But HMAS Adelaide simply returned those in the water to the ship and escorted the vessel into international waters.
Yesterday the ship headed back towards Australia and on nearing Christmas Island those on board reportedly sabotaged the vessel.
The refugees are thought to have set sail from Indonesia on Saturday.
AFP reports from Seoul:
South Korean police yesterday launched an investigation into allegations that 26 illegal immigrants from China suffocated in a fishing boat hold and were dumped at sea.
"We are investigating the alleged dumping overboard of the Chinese," a maritime police official said in the southern port city of Yosu.
Yonhap news agency said the 26 were dumped after being found dead in the hold of the South Korean fishing boat, Taechong, which was used to smuggle some 60 Chinese into the country.
Some of the illegal immigrants who survived the journey told investigators their companions were thrown out of the boat on Sunday night.
South Korean patrol boats were sent to the area where the dumping was alleged to have taken place.
Yonhap quoted the 43-year-old skipper as saying: "My crew and I found 26 people suffocated to death and discarded their bodies sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning in waters off the Sorido island." Sorido is 320 km south of Seoul.
The skipper added that he crammed the Chinese boatpeople into a fish storage tank under the deck last Saturday when he took them in from a Chinese boat off the South Korean island of Cheju.
Some 100 police and military launched a manhunt on the small island of Taekyongdo where the Chinese landed yesterday.
