A strong earthquake that jolted Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia has left 13 people dead and another six missing on Southeast Asia's highest peak, an official said Saturday.

The 6.0-magnitude quake struck early Friday near the picturesque mountain, a popular tourist destination, sending landslides and huge granite boulders tumbling down from its wide, 4,095-meter-high (13,435-foot) crown.

Malaysia's embattled prime minister provoked fierce criticism Friday by not attending an event at which he was to defend himself over an escalating scandal threatening to engulf his administration.

Prime Minister Najib Razak had been expected to use the public forum to hit back at critics of a state-owned development company he launched that is reeling under billions of dollars of debt and accusations of fraud.

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck near Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu on Borneo Friday, cracking roads and buildings in the region and injuring climbers on the popular peak, officials and media reports said.

State officials were quoted by the New Straits Times saying at least four climbers had suffered injuries including broken bones and head wounds as the quake loosened stones and boulders on the 4,095-meter (13,435-foot) mountain's wide granite summit.

Cambodia received its first batch of asylum-seekers from Australian custody on Thursday, with rights groups labeling them "human guinea pigs" for an uncaring policy by Canberra to offload refugees onto other countries.

The migrants -- three Iranians and one ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar -- were flown into Phnom Penh, the capital of one of Southeast Asia's poorest nations with a weak record of upholding human rights.

Four Thai soldiers returning from a football match were shot dead in an ambush in the country's deep south, police said Thursday.

The attack took place on Wednesday afternoon in the Raman district of Thailand's Yala province, local police said.

The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will not be expanded beyond its current area without specific new leads, Australian officials said Wednesday, dousing relatives' hopes the search could last beyond early next year.

In April, more than a year after the plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, Malaysia, Australia and China announced that the search zone would double in size.

Malaysia is a beacon for ethnic Rohingya fleeing oppression and violence in Myanmar, but countless migrants like Mohammed Ismail are still searching for the promised land years after arriving.

Ismail is among tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have risked their lives over the years to reach Malaysia, only to find a stateless limbo and a new kind of marginalisation.

President Barack Obama has urged Myanmar to end discrimination against its ethnic Rohingya minority if it wants to succeed in its democratic transition from decades of junta rule.

The plight of the Muslim group, 1.3 million of whom live in western Myanmar but are mostly denied citizenship, has come under scrutiny as a migrant crisis unfurls in Southeast Asia.

Muslim Rohingya women who were held at human-trafficking camps in Thailand and Malaysia were subjected to gang rapes by their captors, assaults that left at least two of them pregnant, a Malaysian media report said.

Malaysia's state-run Bernama news agency quoted a Rohingya survivor of the camps, Nur Khaidha Abdul Shukur, as saying young women would be taken away nightly from the jungle post where she was held near Padang Besar in Thailand.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday warned Malaysia must be careful that the high profile prosecution of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim does not have a "chilling effect" on democracy.

Hosting a group of young leaders from ASEAN countries at the White House, Obama was asked about the case of former deputy prime minister Ibrahim, who was jailed on much-criticized sodomy charges.