Myanmar's navy has carried out its first rescue of a migrant boat, bringing 208 people to shore, an official told Agence France Presse Friday, as it faced mounting international pressure to tackle a regional migration crisis.

"A navy ship found two boats... on May 21 while on patrol," Tin Maung Swe, a senior official in the western state of Rakhine told AFP, adding "about 200 Bengalis were on one of the boats".

Australia hit back Friday at criticism of its response to thousands of migrants stranded at sea in Southeast Asia, saying it was generous towards refugees in the region.

When asked Thursday whether Australia would offer to resettle the migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar's oppressed Rohingya minority, Prime Minister Tony Abbott replied, "nope, nope, nope".

Seventeen Bangladeshis finally returned home Thursday after being thrown off a boat bound for Malaysia and forced to swim two hours to shore, after attempting to join a migrant exodus, officials said.

The Bangladeshis had spent two months aboard the boat in the Bay of Bengal packed with migrants fleeing poverty to Southeast Asia, before they were thrown overboard in the early hours of Thursday.

European lawmakers urged Thailand on Thursday to crackdown on smugglers and corrupt officials it said were responsible for the thousands of migrants stranded at sea, many Muslim Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

"Thousands of Rohingya people and other migrants continue to be smuggled through Thailand and from other countries in the region by human traffickers, in some cases including corrupt local Thai authorities," the MEPs said in a resolution that was voted through in European Parliament.

Malaysia and Indonesia said Wednesday they would no longer turn away boatpeople, a breakthrough in the region's migrant crisis that came just hours after hundreds more starving people were rescued at sea.

Earlier, Myanmar, whose policies toward its ethnic Rohingya minority are widely blamed for fueling the human flow, also softened its line by offering to provide humanitarian aid to stricken migrants.

At least 2,000 migrants stalked by hunger and violence have been trapped for weeks on boats off Myanmar, the U.N. said Tuesday, as Indonesia called for a regional effort to tackle the crisis.

People-trafficking gangs have either dumped their human cargos from Myanmar and Bangladesh off Southeast Asia's shores or left them stranded at sea since a recent Thai crackdown disrupted the trade's normal routes. 

The U.N. rights and refugee chiefs and other top officials Tuesday called on Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to disembark refugees stranded at sea as outrage mounted over Southeast Asia's migrant crisis.

A statement said the three countries and the 10-nation ASEAN regional bloc should "make saving lives the top priority by .. significantly strengthening search and rescue operations" and "facilitate safe disembarkation."

Muslim boatpeople fleeing dire conditions in Myanmar are entitled to "human rights", a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition urged Monday, in strikingly bold comments on the group who are deeply marginalized in the Buddhist-majority nation.

The plight of the Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar has been thrust into the international spotlight as thousands of desperate migrants from the country -- alongside economic migrants from neighboring Bangladesh -- have swum or been rescued off the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in recent days.

Seven Bangladeshi nationals were rescued on Monday off the Myanmar coast after they were thrown from a fishing trawler packed with migrants heading to Malaysia, a coast guard officer said.

Dickson Chowdhury said the seven men had been pulled from the Bay of Bengal by fishermen from Myanmar and handed over to local Bangladeshi fishermen.

Myanmar Monday acknowledged international "concerns" about waves of boatpeople, many of whom are fleeing from persecution, but denied it is solely to blame as thousands languish in dire straits at sea.

The comments came as fresh details emerged from migrants of brutal fighting with metal bars and knives that left at least 100 dead as food and water dwindled on their rickety vessel as it drifted in Indonesian waters.