Asia people smuggling
A human jawbone is seen at a grave site near a migrant camp used by people-smugglers in a jungle at Bukit Wang Burma in the Malaysian northern state of Perlis, which borders Thailand, in this May 26, 2015 file photo. Malaysian police May 26 began the grisly job of exhuming dozens of graves found in a series of remote human-trafficking camps along the Thai border in the latest grim turn in the region's migrant crisis. Getty Images

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities have found mass graves containing the remains of more than 20 people believed to be human trafficking victims near the border with Thailand, police said on Sunday.

The heavily forested Thai-Malay border has been a transit point for smugglers bringing people to Southeast Asia by boat from Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The migrants are often held for ransom in squalid detention camps and according to some accounts face torture and starvation.

Police uncovered 24 bodies on Saturday in the Bukit Wang Burma area near the Malaysian border with Thailand, close to where authorities in May had found hundreds of bodies in illegal detention camps.

"Following on from the operation in which we found ... bodies of illegal immigrants, 24 more bodies have been found and dug up," police said in a statement, adding that the remains had been handed over to medical experts.

It was not immediately clear if the bodies discovered were those of Rohingya, a minority ethnic group in Myanmar, whose members have fled widespread persecution in that country.

A crackdown by Thai authorities in May drove traffickers to abandon thousands of migrants on rickety, overcrowded boats in Southeast Asian waters, triggering a regional humanitarian crisis that saw them land in Malaysia and Indonesia after being rescued by fishermen.

(Reporting by Trinna Leong; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)