The U.S. military plans to support search efforts for thousands of refugees in the waters off Southeast Asia, and will likely send a P-3 Orion Navy surveillance aircraft, a defense official said on Saturday. The Pentagon is determining where the aircraft will come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The refugees are Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who are trying to escape persecution at home, and Bangladeshis, who are believed to be fleeing the impoverished nation for wealthier Malaysia, the Associated Press has reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their situation has grown desperate as they are now believed to have little food or water, according to media reports. Malaysia and Indonesia had turned some of the migrants back, but on Thursday both countries agreed to temporarily allow 7,000 of the refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have offered to assist governments in the region to improve their understanding of the situation in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal through U.S. maritime surveillance flights,” Army Col. Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told Military Times. “We are actively engaging with the governments of the region to obtain their support and permissions for staging these flights.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. is pleased by reports that Malaysia will be conducting search-and-rescue efforts for the refugees at sea <\/span>and it <\/span>continues to urge countries in the region to act quickly to save the refugees, Warren said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Navy aircraft expected to join search efforts for refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":59092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[16,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1185],"class_list":["post-30741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"KLH4H7PC5JFIHJPVHWIF624FNQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-air-force\/2015\/05\/22\/dod-to-help-with-search-for-refugees-missing-at-sea\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n