At least seven people have died and hundreds more are still missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees sank near the maritime border between Malaysia and Thailand, Malaysian authorities said on Monday (10/11/2025).
The ship, which was carrying about 300 migrants from Burmese’s Rakhine State, sank on November 6 after leaving Burma three days earlier, according to what the Malaysian Bernama Agency quoted the head of the local maritime agency, Rumeli Mustafa, as saying.
Rescue teams have so far been able to save 13 people and recover seven bodies, while search operations continue in an area of more than 580 square kilometers off Langkawi Island, a Malaysian archipelago located in the Andaman Sea, very close to the border with Thailand.
Authorities believe the passengers were divided into three smaller boats as they approached the Malaysian coast in an attempt to avoid detection. The whereabouts of the other two ships are unknown.
According to Al-Rumli, cross-border trafficking networks are increasingly exploiting migrants, turning them into victims of human trafficking via highly dangerous sea routes.
Most of the passengers on board these ships were Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority persecuted in Myanmar, from where hundreds of thousands have fled following the military crackdown in 2017. More than 1.3 million people currently live in refugee camps in Bangladesh in precarious conditions.
Due to violence in their country of origin and lack of opportunities in the camps, thousands of Rohingya sail boats towards Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Indonesia, every year.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 5,100 Rohingya crossed by sea from Burma and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, of whom about 600 died or disappeared.
js (EFE, Reuters)
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