Sea survivors 'drifted for 25 days'

Survivors on a Burmese boat rescued by the Sri Lankan navy have claimed 97 others on board died of starvation after the Thai navy intercepted them and forcibly removed the vessel’s engines.

Thirty-two men and a boy now detained at an immigration detention centre near Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, were rescued last Saturday when their dilapidated wooden vessel began sinking while making a journey to Malaysia. They claimed to have been drifting at sea for 25 days.