Rescue under way after boat sinks off Australia

Two merchant vessels that responded to distress calls from the stricken vessel on Sunday plucked 19 people from the water but reported that was about half the number believed on board, Australian officials said.

The boat went down late Sunday near the Cocos Islands, sparsely populated atolls about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) northwest of the Australian coast and about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of Indonesia.

Government officials said it was too early to say whether those on board were asylum seekers trying to reach Australia, though aspects of the emergency — such as an unseaworthy boat carrying so many people in waters sometimes used by human traffickers — signaled that may be the case.

"All the efforts right now are legitimately dedicated to attending to lives at risk at sea," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters. He noted the remote region was "a very difficult search environment."

Stephen Langford, regional medical director for the Royal Flying Doctor Service that sent a plane to assist the search, said it was a race against time to find more survivors.

"It's a fairly urgent task because there's still people in the water and the weather is not fantastic," he told reporters.

An air force cargo plane reached the area Monday afternoon after hours of flying, and spotted two survivors in the water, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said. It dropped a life raft to them and continued to scour the search zone.

A second military plane was on its way, along with the plane from the doctor's service, a medical charity specializing in medical emergencies in remote Outback areas.

Rhianne Robson of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which was coordinating the search and rescue operation, said the stricken ship was in Australia's maritime search and rescue zone when it sent out distress calls. The authority sought help from vessels in the area because the emergency was so remote, Robson said.

A Taiwanese fishing trawler and the merchant ship LNG Pioneer arrived in the area late Sunday and deployed life rafts and began plucking people from the water.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the chief of Australia's defense forces, said the stricken boat was intact when the rescue vessels first arrived.

"Somehow or other during the process of the interaction between the ship and the trawler and also the stricken vessel, there's been a capsize and people have ended up in the water," Houston told reporters.

There has been a surge of boats carrying asylum seekers toward Australia. Some 35 boats carrying about 1,770 asylum seekers have arrived in Australian waters this year, mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka.

Many of them pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers who put them to sea in leaky boats from Indonesia and sail south. Most end up caught by customs authorities and detained in an immigration camp on remote Christmas Islands while their refugees applications are assessed, a process that can take months or years.

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