More than 50 migrants, mostly Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar, have been held in southern Thailand after authorities acting on a tip-off stopped trucks smuggling them through the country, a local official said Monday.

Of the 53 people held, 37 are believed to be from the Rohingya minority, with the remainder from Bangladesh -- a source of increasing numbers of migrants arriving on Thai shores.

The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution urging Myanmar to grant citizenship to its Rohingya Muslim minority and grant them equal access to services. 

The non-binding measure was adopted by consensus in the 193-nation assembly, a month after it was approved by the assembly's rights committee. 

Sri Lanka's main Muslim party Sunday quit the government and pledged support to the opposition in a move seen as the biggest setback yet to President Mahinda Rajapakse's re-election bid.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauf Hakeem also announced his own resignation as justice minister and said he would now work for the victory of Maithripala Sirisena, the opposition candidate in the January 8 election.

Around 500 people including dozens of Buddhist monks protested near the Chinese consulate in Myanmar's central city of Mandalay on Saturday demanding the closure of a flashpoint copper mine.

It was the largest protest since the fatal shooting of a woman demonstrating against the Letpadaung mine in the northwestern town of Monywa -- a Chinese backed venture dogged by complaints of land grabbing and environmental damage.

Residents of Myanmar's commercial hub Yangon went to the polls Saturday for the first municipal elections in six decades, with voters enthusiastic for change even though many knew little about the candidates or their policies.

The election is being closely watched as a test of the country's democratic credentials ahead of a landmark nationwide poll slated for November next year, despite strict curbs on who could vote on Saturday and the limited power of the councilors they were electing.

Two Myanmar migrant workers accused of murdering a pair of British holidaymakers at a Thai diving resort will be held in custody until their full trial begins in July next year, their lawyer said Friday.

Japan's coastguard said Friday that three foreign crew members had died among a group of 10 who were rescued after they abandoned a cargo ship that sank off the country's northern coast.

The trio -- two Chinese and one from Myanmar -- were part of a group plucked from chilly waters in the strait separating Japan's main Honshu and northernmost Hokkaido islands.

Myanmar's main city is poised to go to the polls Saturday for the first municipal vote in six decades, but observers warn the process is riddled with flaws and could cast a shadow over crucial 2015 general elections.

For many the ballot in Yangon, home to more than five million people, will offer the first taste of voting under the country's quasi-civilian government and a rare chance to steer the direction of its biggest commercial hub.

A decade after towering waves wrenched her newborn baby from her arms, Mi Htay remains haunted by memories of the children she lost in the tsunami whose bodies, like hundreds of other Myanmar migrants in Thailand, were never identified.

No one knows exactly how many foreign laborers died when the tsunami cut into southwestern Thailand as most lacked official work permits and their relatives did not come forward in the days and weeks after the December 26, 2004, disaster fearing arrest or deportation.

The United Nations on Tuesday said it had been unable to reach thousands of displaced people in rebel-held areas of Myanmar's war-torn northern Kachin state for two months as soaring tensions after recent clashes raise international alarm.