MYANMAR Dozens killed in wreck of vessel used by refugees
GENEVA — The U.N. migration agency said Friday that more than 60 people are either confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead following the shipwreck of a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims who were fleeing from violence in Myanmar to Bangladesh.
Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration told reporters in Geneva that 23 deaths have been confirmed after eight more bodies were found overnight following an initial count of 15.
Based on interviews that IOM has conducted with survivors, Millman said, “We believe 40 are missing and presumed drowned” on the vessel, which was thought to have been carrying about 80 people.
The agency says more than 500,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, the start of a military crackdown triggered by a coordinated militant assault on 30 police posts and an army base in northern Rakhine state, where many Rohingya live.
IOM’s Missing Migrants Project said 46 bodies had been retrieved over a three-day period starting Aug. 30 after several boats carrying people trying to reach Bangladesh capsized on the Naf River.
The “very tragic” accident involved a vessel that had been at sea for two days with no food on board and amid choppy seas, Millman said. The Bangladeshi captain hadn’t initially charged the passengers any fee for the transport and had been trying to avoid sea patrols or checkpoints, he said.
“At one point, he (the captain) chose to anchor the vessel, but that proved to be a fatal mistake as the rough seas were much worse than he supposed. This was easily within sight of land,” Millman said.
The U.N. migration agency closely tracks death tolls worldwide of migrants at sea, and generally counts the missing as presumed dead in its tally because confirmation is all but impossible. Its figures are a highly cited source on issues like fatal journeys between Libya and Italy, currently the world’s most-deadly sea route for migrants.