A Thai Navy ship arrived in Phuket ahead of deployment to aid in the region's migrant crisis, an official confirmed Tuesday, according to dpa. The amphibious-assault vessel HTMS Ang-Thong stopped Tuesday at the naval base on the resort island before continuing to the Andaman Sea. It will serve as the command-and-control ship for humanitarian assistance operations, with its two helicopters and on-board emergency medical team, Captain Benjamaporn Wongnakornsawang said. The navy will provide immediate assistance to migrants before sending their ships on to Indonesia and Malaysia, which agreed last week to give temporary shelter to the more than 7,000 people currently estimated to be at sea in the area. Bangkok has so far refused to accept any of the sea-borne migrants, mostly from Bangladesh and Myanmar's ethnic Rohingya group, arguing that the migrants themselves do not see Thailand as their "final destination." Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Monday that any who land in Thailand would be given medical and emergency assistance but would be prosecuted for illegal entry. The Rohingya say they suffer discrimination in Myanmar, which does not recognize them as one of the country's official ethnic groups and considers them Bengali illegal immigrants. The United States on Tuesday praised Malaysia and Indonesia for agreeing to accept the 7,000 migrants, and further credited Malaysia for planning search-and-rescue operations for those stranded at sea. In Washington, US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke urged support for the regional rescue and relief efforts and international participation in a planned conference Friday in Thailand on the migrant crisis. The US has offered help to governments in the region "to improve their understanding of the situation in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, through US maritime surveillance flights," he said. A US Navy P-8 aircraft is already conducting maritime surveillance flights "to locate and mark the positions of boats possibly carrying migrants - the information that comes from those flights will provide an enhanced understanding of the situation at sea," and further US resources could be provided as necessary, Rathke said.
