KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — At least 10 individuals have been killed and 29 others lacking after a ship carrying no less than 60 Indonesian migrants sank within the South China Sea earlier than daybreak on Wednesday, Malaysian officers stated.
The boat capsized in unhealthy climate round 4:30 a.m. off the coast of Tanjung Balau, a seaside city within the southeastern Malaysian state of Johor, a spokesman for the nation’s Maritime Enforcement Agency stated.
Twenty-one individuals have been rescued after the company deployed a helicopter and two boats for a search-and-rescue operation simply earlier than 9 a.m., the spokesman, Nurul Hizam Zakaria, stated.
Bernama, Malaysia’s nationwide information company, posted a photograph on Twitter that it stated confirmed individuals on a seaside recovering the capsized boat from the surf.
A spokesman for the Malaysian Army’s Third Infantry Division later stated that all the passengers on board have been Indonesian. He stated they’d sailed from the Indonesian island of Batam, which borders the Singapore Strait.
Batam is shut sufficient to Singapore and neighboring Malaysia that till the pandemic it had been related to the city-state by common ferry service.
Boat accidents are widespread within the area, and a few have concerned Rohingya refugees.
Over the years, hundreds of Rohingya individuals have tried the perilous crossing by boat to Malaysia from Myanmar, the place they face ethnic persecution, or from Bangladesh, the place they typically reside in poverty. They sometimes head southeast via the Straits of Malacca to Malaysia’s west coast.
Malaysian officers have typically prevented such refugee boats from docking. Last yr, considered one of them was rescued by the Bangladeshi Coast Guard, and officers discovered lots of of malnourished and dehydrated individuals who had been stored within the boat’s maintain by human traffickers.
Hadi Azmi reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Mike Ives from Seoul.