Australia pledges grant of $5 million Australian dollars in humanitarian assistance for Rohingyas living in Cox's Bazar and Myanmar's Rakhine state.

AS many as 8,000 refugees have been adrift in the Andaman Sea lately, some of them stranded for more than two months.

Bangladesh relies on its workers' remittances but is seemingly happy to turn a blind eye as to why half a million of them choose to leave the country every year and how the nearly eight million currently abroad are treated.

In the wake of a much publicised international humanitarian crisis relating to boatpeople, thousands of whom are languishing in the high seas, Myanmar's reluctance to attend Thailand's May 29 regional summit to solve the issue, is disconcerting.

Since 2012, thousands of Rohingyas died in Arakan, and more than 150,000 people have been herded in the so-called Internally Displaced People Camps.

Myanmar migrants on a boat stranded for a week in the Andaman Sea with no food or water say 10 people have died, while some are resorting to drinking urine.

The United States has voiced fear for the lives of the migrants abandoned by traffickers at land and sea, calling on Southeast Asian nations to co-operate to address the crisis.

Thousands of Bangladeshis and members of Myanmar's long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority have no place to go after both Malaysia and Indonesia refused to offer refuge to the boatloads of hungry men, women and children.

A group of 350 migrants from Myanmar tells an activist by phone that they are abandoned by their crew and need help.

Second boat carrying 400 of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar are rescued off Indonesia's far west coast, less than a day after nearly 600 others arrived in a wooden vessel seeking refuge.