Rohingya Refugee Ship Sinks In Malaysia, 7 People Die

The ship carrying Rohingya refugees from Myanmar sank near the Thailand-Malaysia border, with hundreds of people missing, seven people dead. While 13 Rohingya Muslims were rescued.

Reported by Reuters, rescue teams searched an area of 170 square nautical miles near Langkawi Island on Saturday after ships with 300 people on board fled Rakhine state, Myanmar three days earlier, the head of maritime bodies for the region, Romli Mustafa said.

Images from the agency showed a survivor covered in a piece of cloth and another on a stretcher.

Myanmar's poor Rakhine state is known to have experienced conflict, hunger, and ethnic violence over the years, most of which targeted the Rohingya Muslim minority community.

Evicted from Rakhine state after the brutal military crackdown in 2017, about 1.3 million Rohingya residents live as refugees in densely populated camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

Malaysian state media named after the provincial police chief Kedah Adzli Abu Shah, said people initially boarded a large ship from Myanmar but were ordered to move to three smaller vessels, each carrying about 100 people, to avoid detection as they approach Malaysia.

The status of the other two ships is unknown, and search and rescue operations are still ongoing.

Facing violence in Myanmar and increasingly difficult living conditions in Bangladesh, Rohingya residents from the two countries routinely travel dangerous by sea, including to Malaysia.

More than 5,100 Rohingya residents used ships to leave Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 people reported killed or missing, according to data from the United Nations Refugee Agency.