The Coast Guard in Bangladesh confirmed the killing of 15 Rohingya Muslim refugees and the loss of dozens of others today, Tuesday, after a boat capsized carrying about 130 refugees in the Bay of Bengal while trying to reach Malaysia.
Coast Guard spokesman Hamid al-Islam said that about 130 refugees fled from camps near the coastal town of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh and boarded a fishing vessel to cross the Bay of Bengal towards Malaysia, explaining that the 13-meter-long boat had a capacity of only 50 people.
Hamid al-Islam added that 73 of the refugees had been rescued after their boat capsized, including 46 women and three children, while 15 of them were confirmed dead, all of them women and children, and the rest were still missing.
"The chance to find anyone else alive is very small, but we cannot give up, as we continue our search operations," he added.
The Coast Guard spokesman revealed that some of the survivors told them that another boat carrying a similar number of refugees was launched at the same time, but the Coast Guard did not detect it.
Refugees fleeing the camp had hoped to travel two thousand kilometers to reach Malaysia before the onset of the rainy season.
"I wanted to go to Malaysia to live a better life. I wanted to live with my husband," who traveled to Malaysia five years ago, one of the rescued refugees told the media.
A crackdown by the Myanmar army in 2017 caused the flight of more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh.
In November, the Coast Guard of Bangladesh rescued 122 Rohingya after a ship carrying them sank in the Bay of Bengal while trying to reach Malaysia, which has more than 100,000 Rohingya refugees.