Ship sinks off Bangladesh, 100 missing
NEW DELHI. November 2. KAZINFORM As many as 130 people may have drowned off the coast of southern Bangladesh after a boat carrying passengers trying to illegally get into Malaysia sank in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladeshi authorities said Thursday.
The accident appears to be the tragic result of an annual migration of thousands of people along dangerous, clandestine routes operated by criminal gangs, CNN reported.
Details have only recently begun to emerge about the sinking, which happened early Sunday, according to Lt.-Col. Zahid Hassan, the commander of the Bangladeshi border guard battalion in Teknaf, the area from which the boat is believed to have departed.
ust six survivors have been recovered by Bangladeshi authorities from the 136 people reported to have been on the vessel, Hassan said. Authorities are seeking nine people identified as operators of the human trafficking ring that organized the boat trip, he added.
Most of the people on board are believed to have been Bangladeshi, according to Hassan. But some, including three of the survivors, were Rohingya, Muslim people from Rakhine state in Myanmar, or Burma.
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