Tim Stackpoole in Sydney
Five children including an 18 month old baby are now known to have died after a boat carrying asylum seekers sank off Indonesia's Java Island.
West Java province police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said 189 have now been rescued. He estimates around 200 people had been aboard the boat that began sinking Tuesday evening, but a survivor said the number was closer to 250.
The boat left Indonesia just days after the Australian government announced a tough new policy -- that asylum-seekers who arrive by boat will no longer be resettled in Australia, even if they are granted refugee status.
Instead, they could be resettled in poverty-stricken Papua New Guinea. Before the new policy announced Friday, new arrivals were already being taken to PNG or Nauru for processing of their asylum claims.
An AFP reporter who spoke to survivors said a group of 38, including women and children, had swum for their lives in darkness for up to four hours in high seas to reach the shore Tuesday night.
The asylum seekers are thought to be from Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka.
Correspondent Tim Stackpoole is based in Sydney he's been explaining how this tragedy unfolded
