370 Migrants Who Were Stranded At Sea For FOUR MONTHS Rescued Off Coast of Indonesia

More than 370 migrants including 31 children who were stranded at sea for up to four months have been rescued and taken to Indonesia.

The arrivals were the latest in a stream of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants to reach shore in a growing crisis confronting South East Asia.

Some 102 people crammed on board one of the boats were said by search and rescue workers to be suffering from dehydration and starvation.

Those on board that boats included 26 women and 31 children. Another 272 migrants later arrived on eight Indonesian fishing boats.

One of the migrants, 30-year-old Ubaydul Haque, said the ship's engine had failed and the captain fled.

He added that they were at sea for four months before Indonesian fishermen found them and took them to shore.

Mr Haque said: ‘We ran out of food - we wanted to enter Malaysia, but we were not allowed.’

It came as Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to provide temporary shelter to the stranded migrants, in what was the first breakthrough in the crisis.

The announcement was made by Malaysian foreign minister Anifah Aman after an emergency meeting with counterparts from Indonesia and Thailand. 

Most of the migrants are the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority from Burma and others are Bangladeshis fleeing poverty.

‘Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those 7,000 irregular migrants at sea,’ Mr Anifah told reporters.

Earlier, Indonesia's foreign minister Retno Marsudi said the country had ‘given more than it should’ to help migrants stranded on boats by traffickers. 

‘This irregular migration is not the problem of one or two nations. This is a regional problem which also happens in other places,’ she said.

Speaking after a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace, the politician warned that a ‘global problem’ is faced.

Ms Marsudi said Indonesia has sheltered 1,346 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants who washed on to Aceh and North Sumatra provinces last week. 

The first batch came on May 10 with 558 people on a boat, and the second with 807 on three boats landed on Friday.

Even before the crisis, nearly 12,000 migrants were being sheltered in Indonesia awaiting resettlement, she said.

Most of those were Rohingya Muslims who have fled persecution in Buddhist-majority Burma.

No more than 500 of those migrants are resettled in third countries each year, she added.

‘Indonesia has given more than it should do as a non-member-state of the Refugee Convention of 1951,’ Ms Marsudi said.

The crisis emerged this month as governments in the region began cracking down on human trafficking.

Follow Me On Twitter & Instagram: @effiongeton