Migrants dumped at sea

The ill- fated fortune-seekers of the latest boat brought ashore in Myanmar on Wednesday have revealed the horror tale of their life in the high seas.

They were found drifting in the Andaman Sea on Friday in an overloaded fishing boat that was taking on water.

Several migrants said that smugglers had loaded them from three smaller boats onto the larger vessel.

"The traffickers told us 'we can't go to Thailand, so you have to go alone'," Marmod Toyo, who said he was a Rohingya, told Reuters.

He said he was at sea for two months after being offered 50,000 kyat ($45.25) by an agent to get on a boat to Malaysia. Marmod, who has a wife and four children, said he knew it was a trick but that his family needed the money.

"There's not enough food back home and no work," he said. "The human trafficker came and gave me money. I knew he might sell me, but I needed it."

Another migrant said his uncle, who was also on the boat, was beaten to death by one of the crew before the body was dumped overboard.

"My uncle was eating rice and asked for some water, so they killed him," said Siszul Islam, from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

There was no way of independently corroborating the migrants' accounts.