DHAKA: Malaysia rescued 1,018 migrants, including 555 Bangladeshis, after they arrived in three boats on Monday.

Police in the northwest Malaysian island of Langkawi said three boats arrived in the middle of the night to unload the migrants, but only one boat was discovered after it got stuck on a breakwater, said Langkawi police chief Harrith Kam Abdullah.

Some 555 Bangladeshis and 463 Rohingya, including 99 women and 54 children, landed illegally and would be handed to the immigration department, he added.

In the early hours of Monday, Indonesian search and rescue teams discovered another boat drifting off east Aceh with 400 men, women and children from Myanmar and Bangladesh aboard, said Aceh provincial search and rescue chief Budiawan.

Earlier on Sunday, nearly 600 other migrants from Myanmar, Bangladesh arrived in a wooden vessel off Indonesia's Aceh.

An estimated 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis boarded people smugglers' boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has said.

Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia's wealthier economies, has long been a magnet for illegal immigrants from poorer countries in the region.

BDST: 1405 HRS, MAY 11, 2015
RS/SMS