The Malaysian maritime agency reported on Sunday that a boat carrying Rohingyas from Myanmar sank near the Thai-Malaysian frontier, leaving hundreds of people missing. Seven people were killed and thirteen rescued.

Romli Mustafa, the head of the maritime agency for the area, reported that rescuers combed an area measuring 170 square nautical mile near Langkawi Island on Saturday. Three days ago a boat carrying 300 people left Myanmar's Rakhine State.

Images released by the agency show one survivor on a stretcher and another covered in a sheet. Rakhine, Myanmar's impoverished state, has been plagued by conflict and violence against the Rohingya muslim minority. After being forced out of Rakhine State by a brutal military crackdown in 2017, 1.3 million Rohingya now live in camps packed with refugees in Bangladesh.

Malaysian state-run media Bernama quoted Adzli Ab Shah, the Kedah Province Police Chief, as saying that people had initially boarded an enormous vessel from Myanmar, but were then instructed to transfer to three smaller boats each carrying around 100 people to avoid detection when they approached Malaysia.

He said that the status of two other boats was unknown and that a search-and rescue operation was in progress. Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar are regularly forced to take perilous sea journeys, including one to Malaysia, because of violence in their home countries.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, between January and November of this year, more than 5,100 Rohingya left Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat. Nearly 600 people were reported as dead or missing. Reporting by Ashley Tang, DevjyotGhoshal and Andrew Cawthorne; editing by William Mallard and Andrew Cawthorne

(source: Reuters)