About 250 missing after boat carrying Rohingya refugees capsizes in Andaman Sea

Trawler set off from Bangladesh and reportedly capsized due to heavy winds, rough seas and overcrowding About 250 people are missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, according to the UN’s refugee and migration agencies. The agencies said the trawler carrying more than 250 men, women and children reportedly sank due to harsh weather and overcrowding. It had departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was bound for Malaysia. “The trawler … reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas and overcrowding,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday. Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war in the country. They travel by sea, often on makeshift boats. The people onboard this boat were probably leaving huge camps in Cox’s Bazar in south-east Bangladesh, where more than a million refugees forced to flee Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine live in squalid conditions. Rakhine has been the scene of fierce fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic minority rebel group, over control of the territor