Nearly 800 migrants reach land in Indonesia, others sent back to sea

Nearly 800 "boat people" were brought ashore in Indonesia on May 15 but other vessels crammed with migrants were sent back to sea despite a U.N. call to quickly rescue thousands set adrift in Southeast Asian waters. 

Smugglers have abandoned ships full of migrants, many of them hungry and sick, in the Andaman Sea following a Thai crackdown on human trafficking. Thailand is the first stop on the most common trafficking route used by criminals preying on Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis seeking to escape poverty. 

"The latest information we have is about 794 people were found in the middle of the sea and brought ashore by fishermen at 5 a.m. on Friday morning," Khairul Nova, a search and rescue official in Langsa, a town in the Indonesian province of Aceh, told Reuters by phone. 

"They are now in a warehouse by the port as a temporary arrangement," Nova added. 

Nearly 1,400 migrants have landed in Aceh on Indonesia's western tip, and over 1,000 have landed in Malaysia. Aceh is just across the Malacca Strait from  Thailand and Malaysia. 

But migrants on two other boats were turned away. 

Indonesia's navy prevented a boat with hundreds of migrants on board from entering its waters, an Indonesian military spokesman said. 

A vessel carrying around 400 migrants that the Thai navy towed out to sea was heading toward Indonesia, a Thai government radio station reported. 

Malaysia, too, has said it would push boats full of migrants back to sea as Malaysian people did not want to see large numbers arriving in the country. 

Inter-governmental agencies called on the region's governments to rescue the migrants first and worry about long-term solutions later. 

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