Boat carrying 70 Muslim Rohingya sinks off Myanmar
A boat carrying at least 70 Muslim Rohingya capsized and sank Sunday off the western coast of Myanmar. Only eight survivors have been found.
一艘搭載至少70名羅興亞穆斯林的船隻，週日在緬甸西岸外海翻覆沉沒。隻發現8名生還者。
The boat was in the Bay of Bengal and headed for Bangladesh when it went down early Sunday， said Abdul Melik， who works for a humanitarian organization in the region.
這艘船週日稍早滅頂時位於孟加拉灣，朝著孟加拉前進，任職該區一個人道組織的麥利克說。
The incident comes after the United Nations warned that an annual and often deadly exodus of desperate people from Myanmar’s Rakhine state appears to have begun. The exodus usually kicks off in November， when seas begin to calm following the annual monsoon. As many as 1，500 people have fled in the last week.
In Sunday’s incident， Melik said the wooden boat， which was carrying at least 70 Rohingya from Ohn Taw Gyi village， left at around 3 a.m. and broke apart about four hours later. Women， children and babies were among those on board.
Myanmar， a predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million， has been gripped by sectarian violence in the last 18 months， leaving more than 240 people dead and causing 250，000 to flee from their homes. Most of the victims have been Rohingya， a long persecuted Muslim minority in the country， with Buddhist mobs chasing them down with machetes， iron chains and bamboo clubs.