Andaman | Pakistan

Around 250 people, including children, were feared missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations said on Tuesday. “The trawler, which departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was on its way to Malaysia, reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas, and overcrowding,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war in their country. They travel by sea, often aboard makeshift boats. The Rohingya on board this latest boat were likely leaving huge camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where more than a million refugees forced to flee Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine live in squalid conditions. Rakhine state has been the scene of fierce fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic minority rebel group, over control of the territory. The exact circumstances surroundi...