(MENAFN- Live Mint) Two boats carrying over 300 members of the Rohingya community from Myanmar have sunk near the Thai-Malaysian border in the last two days. Authorities fear hundreds of casualties.

So far, seven bodies had been recovered and 13 survivors found during Malaysia's search, Malaysian authorities said on Monday.

Thai officials earlier on Monday said their search had found four dead.

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A boat carrying around 70 people sank in waters near the Thailand -Malaysia border on Sunday, while the status of another boat with about 230 passengers, which sank on Saturday, remains unclear.

Rescuers were combing an area of 170 square nautical miles near Langkawi island after a boat with 300 people on board left Myanmar's Rakhine state three days earlier.

Images from the agency showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher. Myanmar's impoverished Rakhine state has suffered years of conflict, hunger and ethnic violence mostly targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority community.

A staff of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency checks on a survivor who was rescued by a fishing boat's crew after a boat from Buthidaung, Myanmar, sank near the Malaysia–Thailand border, close to Langkawi Also Read | US govt in early talks to buy warehouses as 'mega detention centres' for ICE use

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.

Malaysian state media Bernama cited Kedah province police chief Adzli Abu Shah as saying people initially boarded a large vessel from Myanmar but were instructed to transfer onto three smaller boats, each carrying about 100 people, to avoid detection as they neared Malaysia.

The status of the other two boats was unknown, and a search-and-rescue operation was ongoing, he said. 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.

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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 UN Refugee Agency.

(With agency inputs)

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