Malaysia's police chief said on Monday that 17 people, including two who recently returned from Syria, had been arrested on suspicion of plotting terror attacks in the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Authorities in the Muslim-majority country have expressed increasing alarm over the threat of Muslim militancy in the wake of the Islamic State (IS) group's bloody jihad in Syria and Iraq.

Malaysian police arrested a prominent publisher and a website editor for sedition on Tuesday, the latest targets in a mounting tally of detentions that is being compared to an infamous 1987 political crackdown.

Ho Kay Tat, head of The Edge media group, was arrested along with Jahabar Sadiq, chief editor of The Malaysian Insider news portal which is owned by The Edge, the portal said.

A Malaysian court convicted and sentenced a local fishmonger to death on Tuesday for the murder of two British medical students last year, his defense lawyer said.

Zulkipli Abdullah, 24, was found guilty of stabbing to death Neil Dalton and Aidan Brunger in the city of Kuching last August after an argument in a bar.

Malaysian press groups on Tuesday criticized the arrest of three editors at a leading news portal over a disputed report, calling it part of a "worrying trend" of declining press-freedom standards.

The editors for The Malaysian Insider were arrested late Monday on suspicion of sedition and spent the night in jail, the website said.

Malaysian police arrested three leading opposition politicians in a bid to thwart a protest march on Saturday demanding the release of jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, his party said.

The protest went ahead anyway, however, with several hundred people taking to the streets of the capital Kuala Lumpur to denounce the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak.

More than 415,000 people, equivalent to over 12 percent of Singapore's citizens, have visited parliament to pay their respects to former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, officials said Saturday. 

An update from the State Funeral Organising Committee said the queue for mourners to enter the legislature would be closed at 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) in preparation for the Asian statesman's cremation on Sunday. 

Four suspected insurgents were killed and 22 others arrested during a firefight with security forces in Thailand's deep south, police said Thursday, in the latest clashes to hit the restive region.

Thai military, police and rangers laid siege to To Kood village in Pattani province Wednesday evening after a tip-off about potential militants -- who are fighting for greater autonomy for the Muslim-majority southernmost provinces.

Malaysia's handling of Flight MH370's disappearance faced new criticism on Monday after an interim investigation uncovered a dud beacon battery and more potential missed opportunities to track the plane a year ago.

The international investigation team set up by Malaysia released its interim report on Sunday, the first anniversary of the disappearance. It contained no new clues on what caused the plane to vanish with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

Emotional families marked the first anniversary of the disappearance of flight MH370 Sunday as a new report said the battery on its black box locator beacon had expired, but shed no new light on the cause of the disaster.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said his nation remained committed to the so-far fruitless hunt for the Malaysia Airlines flight, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, and was hopeful it would be found.

Several thousand people marched through Kuala Lumpur on Saturday to demand the release of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed last month for five years on sodomy charges.

Chanting "Free Anwar!" and "Reformasi" (Reform), the demonstrators, led by members of Anwar's family, staged a short march from a busy shopping district toward the capital's Petronas Towers skyscrapers.