At least seven people died and hundreds were missing after a boat carrying members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority sank near the Thailand-Malaysia border on Sunday.
At least 13 survivors had been found by Monday morning, an official from Malaysia’s maritime authority said.
Thai officials said earlier on Monday that their search had found four dead people.
The boat that sank was reportedly carrying about 70 people. The status of two other boats in the fleet carrying about 230 people remained unclear.
More victims could be found at sea as rescue efforts continued, First Admiral Romli Mustafa, the maritime authority director of the northern Malaysian states of Kedah and Perlis, said.
Rescuers were combing an area of around 170 square nautical miles near Langkawi island, he added.
Images from the agency showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher.
Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s impoverished Rakhine state have suffered years of conflict, hunger and ethnic violence. Driven out of their homeland following a brutal 2017 military crackdown, over 1.3 million Rohingya now live as refugees in densely packed camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. Smaller numbers have fled to Malaysia, Pakistan and the Gulf nations as well.
Rohingya Muslims are seen in majority Buddhist Myanmar as foreign interlopers from South Asia, who are denied citizenship and face widespread abuse from both the state and largely non-Muslims ethnic militias.
Among the survivors found in the waters off Langkawi were two Rohingya men and one Bangladeshi man, state media outlet Bernama reported, citing the Kedah police chief Adzli Abu Shah. The body of a Rohingya woman was also found.
The sailors, looking to reach Malaysia, had initially boarded a large vessel but were told to transfer into three smaller boats as they neared the border to avoid detection by the Malaysian authorities, Mr Adzli was quoted as saying.
The status of the other two boats was not known and a search-and-rescue operation was ongoing, he said.
Facing violence at home in Myanmar and increasingly difficult living conditions in the Bangladeshi refugee camps, Rohingya from both countries regularly attempt perilous journeys by sea, including to Malaysia.
More than 5,100 Rohingya took boats from Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 people reported dead or missing, according to data from the UN refugee agency.
Additional reporting by agencies.