KUALA LUMPUR, April 27: Malaysia will not build new detention camps for illegal immigrants to ease overcrowding, but plans to tighten border security to keep them from entering the country, a news report said on Sunday.

Human rights activists have renewed criticism about cramped conditions at 17 prisons where some 10,000 illegal immigrants are held while awaiting deportation, after some 60 detainees at a southern centre rioted and set fire to a building last week.

Officials said tensions boiled over partly because 1,090 detainees were held in a centre that was not equipped to hold so many people. The rioters were from neighbouring countries including Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia.

But Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said the solution to overcrowding is stricter border controls — not more detention centres, the New Straits Times newspaper reported on Sunday.—AP