At least 17 Rohingya, Including Children, Died in Boat Capsize

The boat, with at least 90 people on board, was on its way to Malaysia across the Bay of Bengal when it sank. Some of the bodies washed up on beaches in the western state of Rakhine, while more than 50 passengers remain missing, it said, Al Jazeera reported.

While hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar for Bangladesh after a brutal military crackdown nearly five years ago, some remain in Rakhine where they mostly live in squalid camps with severe restrictions on movement.

The boat had left Sittwe, the state capital, on May 19 but ran into bad weather a couple of days later.

The United Nations refugee agency said it was “shocked and saddened” by the reported deaths and was seeking more information from Myanmar.

"The latest tragedy shows once again the sense of desperation being felt by Rohingya in Myanmar and in the region," Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR’s Director for Asia and the Pacific said in a statement. "It is shocking to see increasing numbers of children, women and men embarking on these dangerous journeys and eventually losing their lives."

In its annual report on the sea crossings, the UNHCR said that 2020 was the deadliest year ever for Rohingya crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.

Of the 2,413 people known to have travelled in 2020, 218 died or went missing at sea, the UN agency said in its report last August.