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.

Denied their traditional route out of poverty in the Gulf and often urged on by relatives, growing numbers of young Bangladeshis are joining the waves of Rohingya trying to reach Southeast Asia on horror boat journeys.

As the plight of millions has worsened in Bangladesh in recent years, smugglers organizing the perilous sea voyages have grown increasingly sophisticated, keen to cash in on their misery.

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.

Bangladesh police said Tuesday they have asked the government to ban an Islamist militant group they suspect of involvement in the murders of atheist bloggers.

Police have already charged members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team with the 2013 murder of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, and now suspect the same group was responsible for the deaths of three more bloggers this year.

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.

The Indonesian navy prevented a suspected migrant boat from entering the country's waters at the weekend after the arrival of hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshis and has stepped up patrols in the area, the military said Monday.

Nearly 3,000 migrants have swum to shore or been rescued off Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand over the past week, around half of whom have arrived in Indonesia's western province of Aceh. 

Around $1,100 should have secured passage for each of the Rohingya migrants who were found adrift in the Andaman Sea -- victims of a dark trade in humans that pivots around smuggling kingpins in Thailand's south.

From the heaving bow of a wooden boat packed with emaciated and bedraggled fellow Rohingya, Mohammad Salim, 30, said his brother had the 4,000 Malaysian ringgit ($1,120) demanded by the brokers -- if he made it.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged Southeast Asian countries not to turn back migrants and refugees fleeing on boats, telling them that rescue at sea was an international obligation.

Malaysia and Indonesia have vowed to bar ships carrying migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, leaving them stranded in the Andaman Sea and Straits of Malacca.