Zach Hope and Karuni Rompies – More than 60 refugees are feared starved at sea or drowned while possibly trying to reach Australia by boat.
The wooden vessel was carrying scores of Rohingya, a persecuted ethnic minority in Myanmar, when it capsized on Wednesday near the city of Meulaboh in West Aceh.
At least 75 people have been rescued, but the precise number on the boat is the subject of contradictory information. So is their intended destination.
Antara Indonesian News Agency, citing a regional official, reported the Rohingyas were trying to reach Australia.
The Australian Border Force said on Friday afternoon "the suggestion made by some media outlets that the venture was bound for Australia is false".
Asian news service BenarNews also reported the boat was en route to Australia and had departed a Malaysian refugee camp late last month.
"Fifty have died at sea due to lack of food," survivor Zaned Salim was reported as saying. "We only ate once a day. Sometimes not at all."
Nadia Meditarian, a spokeswoman for Aceh's search and rescue, said her agency had no information that Australia was the goal.
Amiruddin Pawang, chief of a West Aceh fishers association, said a local fisherman discovered the boat at about 10am [2pm AEDT] on Wednesday with survivors crowded onto the overturned hull.
"He wanted to help, but plenty of them jumped to the [fisherman's] boat and it sank because it was too small," he said. "Our fisherman was then rescued by another fisherman."
Another local then attempted to rescue the survivors but had to abort when it became clear his vessel was also too small.
"At that time, he saw some corpses in the water," Amiruddin said. "He did not know how many. But one survivor said there were 150 people on the boat."
Aceh's search and rescue agency said it had rescued 69 people – including nine children – on Thursday, while fishermen had rescued a further six.
UNHCR spokesman Faisal Rahman told Indonesian news site Kompas that survivors said there were originally 142 people on board. If accurate, this meant 67 people were still unaccounted for.
"I don't dare say the ones who are missing have died or not. What is clear is they are missing," he said.
An Indonesian search and rescue official, however, has been quoted as saying he did not believe the wooden vessel could fit 150 people and those rescued had not reported any deaths.
The formal rescue team only left Banda Aceh on Wednesday evening, many hours after the capsizing, and initially had difficulty locating the boat.
The Rohingyas, a Muslim minority of war-ravaged and Buddhist-majority Myanmar, are among the most persecuted people on earth.
Since 2017, Myanmar authorities have forced them from their homes Rakhine State to international refugee camps, including the world's largest at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.
More than 1500 fleeing the lawless and squalid conditions there landed on the Aceh coastline between late 2023 and mid-January.
But the Rohingyas have not always been welcomed in Aceh. In December, a mob of Indonesian students stormed a facility housing the refugees and demanded they be deported.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention and therefore has no obligation to accept them.Many live there impoverished nonetheless while they wait for UNHCR resettlement.
The plight of Rohingyas was central to the Australian High Court's decision in November last year to order the government release a refugee referred to as NZYQ from immigration detention because there was no prospect of him being safely deported home. (With AP)