Boat with Rohingya migrants sinks off Malaysia, hundreds missing
The vessel had left Myanmar's Buthidaung with about 300 people on board.
This handout picture taken and released by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) on Nov 9, 2025 shows a MMEA staff member searching for suvivors after a boat carrying migrants from Myanmar capsized near the Malaysia–Thailand border, during a search and rescue operation off the coast of Langkawi. (Photo: AFP/Handout/Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency)
KUALA LUMPUR: A boat carrying members of the Rohingya community from Myanmar has sunk near the Thai-Malaysian border, with hundreds missing, seven dead and 13 rescued, the Malaysian maritime agency said on Sunday (Nov 9).
Rescuers were combing an area of 170 square nautical miles near Langkawi island on Saturday after a boat with 300 people on board left Myanmar's Rakhine state three days earlier, said the maritime agency head for the area Romli Mustafa.
Among the survivors found in the waters off Langkawi were three Myanmar men, two Rohingya men and one Bangladeshi man, while the body was that of a Rohingya woman, state media Bernama said, citing Kedah police chief Adzli Abu Shah.
Images from the agency showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher.
Members of the mainly Muslim Rohingya minority periodically flee majority-Buddhist Myanmar, where they are seen as foreign interlopers from South Asia, who are denied citizenship and face abuse.
The Malaysia-bound people initially boarded a large vessel but as they neared the border, they were instructed to transfer onto three smaller boats, each carrying about 100 people, to avoid detection by the authorities, Adzli was quoted as saying.
The status of the other two boats was not known, and a search-and-rescue operation was ongoing, he said.
Myanmar's impoverished Rakhine state has suffered years of conflict, hunger and ethnic violence mostly targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority community.
Driven out of Rakhine state following a brutal 2017 military crackdown, some 1.3 million Rohingya live as refugees in densely-packed camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Facing violence at home in Myanmar and increasingly difficult living conditions in Bangladesh, Rohingya from both countries regularly attempt perilous journeys by sea, including to Malaysia
More than 5,100 Rohingya have taken boats to leave Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 people reported dead or missing, according to data from the United Nations Refugee Agency.
