AKIPRESS.COM - The U.N. refugee agency is estimating that over 3,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants — or even more — could still be adrift in the Andaman Sea.

The exact numbers are not known, but the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says it triangulated reports in the media and other sources and estimates the current number could be over 3,000 — or more that no one knows about.

More than 3,000 Rohingya minority Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshi economic migrants also on the boats with them have already landed in Indonesia and Malaysia, and over 100 in Thailand.

Only Rohingyas are being given a one-year temporary shelter while Bangladeshis face repatriation.

Malaysian navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar says four vessels are searching for any migrant ships that could still be out at sea, and three helicopters and three combat boats are on standby.

Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group that live in northern Rakhine (Arakan), Burma and speak the Rohingya language. According to Rohingyas and most scholars, they are indigenous to the state of Rakhine, while other historians claim that they migrated to Burma from Bengal primarily during the period of British rule, and to a lesser extent, after the Burmese independence in 1948 and Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.