THE dead baby has lain all morning on a table in the local clinic, wrapped in a white shroud.

But now it is time move the child inland to a proper morgue.

Vinothini, a very young mother, is hit with yet another crushing wave of grief.

Vinothini stumbles, supported by her husband Vimalarasu, as paramedics carry a yellow body bag holding their one-year-old son, Kishanlh, to an ambulance.

She sinks further in despair.

Wrenching screams breaks out in the clinic grounds as a Sri Lankan mother is reunited with her lifeless son, who appears to be aged about five.

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media_camera Jayanti beach in Cidaun, Java, where asylum seekers are being rescued from the ocean. Picture: Ardiles Rante

Standing in the clinic doorway with heavy tears streaming down her face is Dhanusa, aged 34, also from Sri Lanka.

Her three children, aged 12, 10 and seven, and her husband, are all gone, taken by the sea.

They were thrown into heaving seas at around 5pm on Tuesday night, after a wickedly overloaded smugglers' vessel nosedived and broke at the seams off the west Java coast.

Dhanusa said when they were in their deepest strife, a vessel pulled alongside as she fell into the sea.

"One ship near us," she said in broken English. "Not save, not care."

Other witnesses say the captain of the asylum vessel arranged through the smuggler network for a boat to rescue of himself and the crew, abandoning the others.

People smugglers don't make available their ship's manifests and it is not certain how many were aboard.

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Local police say that 157 people made it to shore. They believe there were 175 people on board.

The asylum-seekers say there were more than 200 aboard, including approximately 40 children, about 30 of whom are not accounted for.

At 1pm local time there was a rush of excitement as rescuers began bringing survivors to shore.

They said they spent the night in life jackets, clinging to debris.

media_camera Asylum seekers in Cidaun, Cianjut district , West Java today. Picture: Rante Ardiles

Eight people came in but the mood darkened when the first was a boy - aged 3 or 4 - who was breathing but not responding to treatment.

An Iranian father wept for joy upon finding his small daughter alive - who apart from crying uncontrollably - seemed to be in good shape.

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The rest were adults.

Rescuers also brought in more body bags bringing the death toll to nine.

Inside the makeshift clinic, another Sri Lankan woman tells how her husband had already gone ahead by boat to Australia, to prepare the way for a new life for herself and two daughters, aged his six and two.

media_camera Asylum seekers in Cidaun, Cianjut district , West Java today. Picture: Rante Ardiles

This man does not yet know that his six-year-old daughter is dead.

Survivors said the boat departed from Jayanti, a secluded beach near the fishing village of Cidaun on Tuesday morning. It had been loaded up by local fishermen working for the smugglers. The asylum-seekers said the boat started taking water the moment the passengers crushed onto its decks.

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They limped slowly in the direction of Christmas Island when the asylum-seekers, mostly Sri Lankans and Iranians, began pleading with the captain to turn around. He agreed, but the water level below decks began to rise about the diesel engines.

For three hours people were praying, terrified, as they washed helplessly in the Indian Ocean. Then a series of waves, pushed by strong easterly winds coming from behind, swamped the boat. It broke in two along the keel.

The woman who is in a hospital in Cidaun with her surviving two-year-old described what happened when they were thrown into the sea.

"I asked somebody to help me," said the woman, whose name will not be used out of respect to the husband, whom she is unable to contact. "I had one hand on a man, and another hand on the baby. But then we got split.

"The man was holding (my older daughter) but the water was like a whirlpool," she said. She said she saw her daughter rip off her cheap lifejacket as it became soaked and too heavy to hold her up.

"And then she's gone."

A young father, Arul Raj, told how when he hit the water on Tuesday afternoon he briefly blacked out.

"I felt I was already dead," he said. "But then I remembered my family, and my son." He swam with his son for seven hours. He lost contact with his wife, Nithya, and came to believe she was dead.

The boy, Aiden, now lies with his mother in a clinic bed. Aiden took a lot of water but is OK. Nithya's mother is missing at sea.

The local fishermen who helped with the rescue were likely the very same people who transported the asylum-seekers to the doomed vessel. They gathered around the little port in small groups, closing ranks.

The Sri Lankans said they mostly travelled down in microbuses from Bogor, in central Java. Some said they had been in Indonesia only a week.

The Iranians mostly came directly from Jakarta after being collected by Iranian people smugglers.

One of the Iranians, Ali, aged 24, who was originally from Iran, pointed to a body lying under a sarong. He said it was his mother, Sarimah, who survived for four hours floating with her brother-in-law, her three sons and her young daughter before she had a heart attack and died.

The family clung to Sarimah, and brought her to shore in the night.

None of the asylum-seekers said they had ever heard of Kevin Rudd's Papua New Guinea solution.

Smugglers make sure the asylum-seekers are put in an information void as they prepare to travel. Their mobile phones are removed and they are not allowed to watch television news.

All said the smugglers began to prepare them for the journey prior to the Rudd announcement.

The origin of the boat is uncertain, but some sources say Surabaya, on the west of Java. News Corp Australia is aware that until Sunday evening it had been anchored in a lonely bay about 100km to the west, south of the busy port of Palabuhan Ratu. It was under observation but disappeared.

It turned up several kilometres off Cidaun beach in the dark of Tuesday morning, waiting for its payload.

"They should get caught," said Ali, whose mother died from the heart attack.

Most were in deep shock. When the smugglers show them the journey on the map, it looks an easy cruise to Christmas Island; a simple ferry ride.

But yesterday afternoon, the same winds that caused the asylum boat to swamp and break were playing havoc on the search.

paul.toohey@news.com.au

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