A total of 5,899 Rohingya migrants have illegally entered Thailand by sea on 48 occasions since October last year, authority was quoted by the Bangkok Post online as reporting on Thursday.

Lt-Gen Dithaporn Sasasamit, Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc), said of that number, and 1,752 men, women and children are still in Thailand. Others have been pushed out.

Of the male migrants, 1,177 have been lodged at holding centers run by the Immigration Police Bureau in southern Songkhla province and nearby provinces and 265 are staying at a center run by another agency.

The 310 women and children are now in the care of the social development and human security office of Songkhla.

Under a resolution made at a meeting of agencies at the Foreign Ministry in late January, the Rohingya are to be provided with humanitarian aid for a period of not over six months.

During the six months, the Foreign Ministry is to coordinate with the country of origin to issue documents to confirm their citizenship and take the illegal migrants back, and at the same time coordinating with third countries to take them for resettlement.

The Rohingyas, including small children and women, arrived in overcrowded boats after leaving the Rakhine state, northwest of Myanmar, where sectarian unrest between the Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims had flared since late last year.

Representatives of the refugees appealed to Thai authorities not to send them back to Myanmar, which already denied citizenship to the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in the Rakhine state.