Around 250 people, including children, are feared missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations confirmed on Tuesday. According to the UNHCR, the trawler departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was headed for Malaysia when it sank due to “heavy winds, rough seas, and overcrowding.”
The disaster underscores an annual cycle of desperation: thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives fleeing repression and civil war, often aboard dangerously overloaded makeshift boats. Most are leaving the vast refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where more than a million people who fled Myanmar’s western states remain in limbo. Search-and-rescue details remain scarce, and the true death toll may not be known for days.
