Sri Lankan asylum seekers sent back from Cocos Island

A chartered jet flown from the Cocos Islands to Sri Lanka overnight returned the group of asylum seekers, including children, who had arrived by boat on Monday, Radio Australia reported.

The arrival of the apparently undetected boat marked the first reported asylum seeker vessel to reach Australian territory in nearly two years.

One resident counted seven children in the group including babies.

He told the radio station on Thursday night he saw the group being herded from a mini-bus with covered windows onto a plane at the local airport.

"It was all done specifically under the cover of darkness," he said.

"The way they positioned the vehicles was to obscure as much as possible."

"We all live on the runway basically, it's hard to sneak a big white plane in without anyone knowing."

"There's babies in there, less than one year old. It made it a lot more human."

A local gave Hack a video they say was captured at the airport. It shows a mini-bus with covered windows and a large white passenger jet on the runway.

Another Cocos Island resident confirmed there was at least one child in the group.

A flight tracking website showed a flight listed to depart from Cocos, but with no destination, landed in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo early this morning, according to refugee activist Jessie Taylor.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has refused to comment on "operational matters" and therefore won't confirm the number of people in the group.

Locals have told Hack there are between 12-25 people.