Nearly 100 people reported missing after a rickety boat carrying Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar to Malaysia sank off the Bangladesh coast early on Wednesday morning, reports quoting officials said.

A top official of the Bangladesh Border Guard said the vessel was carrying around 110 passengers when it went down in the Bay of Bengal about 15 kilometer off the southern coastal district of Cox Bazaar.

Eleven occupants of the ill-fated boat were rescued with the help of local fishermen, while search for the missing continued, the reports said quoting Lt-Col. Zahid Hasan.

It was the second such incident in less than a fortnight after a boat carrying some 135 passengers, mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar, sank in the sea on October 28.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas, considered to be stateless people, have fled Myanmar in past decades to escape violence by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. Nearly 100 Rohingya Muslims have been killed in the fresh outbreak of violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state where thousands are living in relief camps opened by the government.

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