Survivors key to boat fire mystery

Police were yesterday preparing to interview survivors of the boat that exploded in the Indian Ocean last week, killing five asylum seekers and injuring dozens of others.

The interviews are the first in what Northern Territory investigators expect to be an inquiry that could last months and may involve raising the boat from where it lies 250 metres under the sea.

The inquiry is already at the centre of a political storm raging around the incident, with the Government fending off claims of a cover-up after its refusal to comment on the cause of the explosion, and that its softer line on asylum seekers has unleashed a new wave of boat people.

The Government has been forced into a political vice because of the fallout that followed false claims by the previous conservative Government during the 2001 election campaign that asylum seekers had thrown their children into the sea after being intercepted by the Australian Navy.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard reaffirmed the official line at the weekend, denying that the Government was suppressing information and that no comment should be made until the police inquiry had been completed.

Speculation has been raging about the cause of the explosion that sank the boat with 47 Afghan asylum seekers, two Indonesian crew and a number of Australian sailors on board as it lay to between two Australian patrol boats.

The Navy has released brief video footage of the fire, showing people swimming for safety as dense black smoke billows from the boat.

Other pictures have been withheld by police investigating the incident.

Minutes before the fire, one of the patrol boats, HMAS Childers, had issued a "high threat alert", which some sources told reporters could have been prompted by the smell of petrol.

Northern Territory coroner Greg Cavanagh, prompted by "intense interest and speculation", yesterday released a preliminary finding on the cause of the deaths of the three men whose bodies were recovered after the explosion.

He said that subject to toxicology and other forensic tests the provisional cause of the deaths was drowning.

Two other missing asylum seekers are now also presumed dead.

Doctors in Australia have been treating critically injured survivors, ferried by helicopter from an oil rig to the north of Western Australia, and flown to Perth, Darwin and Brisbane by FAAR Globemaster and Hercules transports. Yesterday 23 were in a stable condition at Royal Perth Hospital, four of seven flown to Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital remained in induced comas and in critical condition, 11 were in a stable condition in Royal Darwin

Hospital, and three have been released into the custody of the Immigration Department.

Police intended interviewing the three men in an immigration detention centre.

Debate over the cause of the explosion has intensified since WA Premier Colin Barnett last week claimed that the explosion followed the dousing of the boat in petrol by asylum seekers.

Sources have since given varying accounts to the Australian media, including claims that petrol had been poured into the bilges, and others that the petrol had been used as a threat that had gone disastrously wrong.

The ABC reported that unnamed senior sources had said that petrol had been poured on the deck in a bid to force the Navy to allow the boat to land in Australia, but had accidentally ignited.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told ABC radio yesterday that politicians had previously got themselves into deep water by pretending they knew things which had not been the subject of comprehensive and exhaustive examination.

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has continued to attack the Government, claiming that it now had all the facts of the incident.

"The time has come for [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd to tell the Australian people the truth," he said.

"What did happen on the boat?"