The Malaysian Maritime Agency said on Sunday that a boat carrying members of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar sank near the border between Thailand and Malaysia, leaving hundreds missing, seven dead and 13 others rescued.
Rescuers were searching a 170-square-nautical-mile area near the island of Langkawi on Saturday, after a boat with 300 people on board left Myanmar’s Rakhine state three days earlier, said Romli Mustapha, head of the region’s maritime agency.
Agency footage showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher.
The poor state of Rakhine in Myanmar has been suffering for years from conflict, famine and ethnic violence, especially against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Expelled from Rakhine after a brutal military crackdown in 2017, about 1.3 million Rohingya live as refugees in overcrowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
Malaysia’s official Bernama news agency quoted Kedah provincial police chief Adzli Abu Shah as saying that the people initially boarded a large ship from Myanmar, but were asked to move to three smaller boats, each carrying about 100 people, to avoid detection as they approached Malaysia.
He added that the status of the other two boats is unknown, and that a search and rescue operation is underway.
Faced with violence in Myanmar and increasingly difficult living conditions in Bangladesh, Rohingya in both countries regularly attempt dangerous journeys by sea, including to Malaysia.
More than 5,100 Rohingya boarded boats to leave Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 people killed or missing, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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