Fifteen people were rescued from a burning fishing vessel about 670km west of Carnarvon, Western Australia, on Wednesday morning.

No injuries were reported and all people on board have been accounted for.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) coordinated the rescue after detecting a Taiwanese coded distress beacon from a fishing vessel at about 11.30pm AEST on Tuesday. AMSA tasked its search and rescue Dornier aircraft from Perth to respond, as well as a civil aircraft carrying a police air observer.

The Dornier aircraft arrived on scene about 7.30am AEST on Wednesday, followed by the civil aircraft an hour later.

AMSA also issued a broadcast to shipping and a United Kingdom flagged oil tanker, and a Greek flagged container ship responded.

Once on scene, the Dornier aircraft reported the vessel was on fire with several people spotted on the bow of the vessel, and conducted a successful liferaft drop to the vessel.

The oil tanker arrived on scene about 10am AEST and launched its rescue boat, and a fishing vessel, which was in the area, also came to the aid of the fishing vessel.

The 15 people on board the burning vessel were transferred directly to the assisting fishing vessel or via the liferaft dropped by the Dornier aircraft.

The rescued people were due to be taken to the fishing vessel’s next port in Indonesia.

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