Two boats carrying more than 300 members of the Rohingya community from Myanmar sank near the Thai-Malaysian border in the past two days. Authorities fear hundreds of victims.
So far, the search in Malaysia has found seven bodies and 13 survivors, Malaysian authorities said on Monday.
Thai officials said earlier Monday that their search found four dead.
A boat carrying about 70 people sank in waters near the Thai-Malaysian border on Sunday, while the condition of another boat with about 230 passengers that sank on Saturday remains unclear.
Rescuers were combing an area of 170 square nautical miles near the island of Langkawi after a boat with 300 people on board left Myanmar’s Rakhine state three days earlier.
Pictures from the agency showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher. Myanmar’s impoverished state of Rakhine has suffered years of conflict, hunger and ethnic violence, mostly targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority community.
About 1.3 million Rohingya, who were driven out of Rakhine state after a brutal military crackdown in 2017, live as refugees in overcrowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
Malaysian state media Bernama quoted Kedah provincial police chief Adzli Abu Shah as saying the people initially boarded a large vessel from Myanmar but were instructed to transfer to three smaller boats, each carrying about 100 people, to avoid detection as they approached Malaysia.
The condition of the other two boats was unknown and a search and rescue operation is underway, according to him. Facing violence at home in Myanmar and increasingly difficult living conditions in Bangladesh, Rohingya from both countries regularly attempt dangerous sea journeys, including to Malaysia.
More than 5,100 Rohingya took boats to leave Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 reported dead or missing, according to the UN refugee agency.
