Nearly 90 people are missing after an overloaded boat carrying Rohingya refugees towards Malaysia sank off Bangladesh early on Wednesday, the second such tragedy in less than a fortnight, officials said.
Bangladesh Border Guard commander Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hasan said the wooden vessel was carrying around 110 passengers when it went down around 15 kilometres (nine miles) off the southern Cox's Bazaar coastal district.
"We have rescued 23 survivors with the help of local fishermen and a search and rescue operation is underway," Hasan told AFP.
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"The boat was heading to Malaysia illegally," he added.
Hasan confirmed that at least two of those who had been rescued were Rohingya and that they were all being kept in custody.
Lieutenant Badruddoza, a commander in the coastguard who uses only one name, said that a search and rescue operation was being conducted in conjunction with the Bangladesh navy.
The latest tragedy comes after a boat carrying some 135 passengers, mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees who had fled unrest in neighbouring Myanmar, sank in the Bay of Bengal on October 28. Only around half a dozen made it to safety.
Hasan said that the survivors of Wednesday's accident had either managed to be picked up by passing fishing boats or were found floating in the water by the rescue teams.
He said the wooden motorboat had a stated capacity of 70 passengers.
"One 30-year old survivor, Zamir Hossain, told us that the boat capsized after one passenger fell from the boat into the sea and the boat turned abruptly in a bid to rescue him," Hasan said.
"I have spoken with the survivors who told me that they set sail around midnight and the boat sank around four hours after," the Bangladesh government's chief administrator in the area, Shamsul Islam, said.
"This is another case of an illegal bid to reach Malaysia. The middlemen took money from these people, promising them to get to the country," he said adding that most survivors were from the Teknaf area of Cox's Bazaar.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar in past decades to escape persecution, often heading to neighbouring Bangladesh, and recent outbreaks of violence, in June and October, have triggered another exodus.
Since the unrest erupted, Bangladesh has been turning away boatloads of fleeing Rohingya. The policy has been criticised by the United Nations but Bangladesh said it was already burdened with an estimated 300,000 of the minority group.
Myanmar's 800,000 stateless Rohingya, described by the UN as among the world's most persecuted minorities, are seen by the government and many Burmese as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.