A stricken luxury cruise ship with over a thousand people on board has arrived at a port on Malaysia's Borneo island.

Escorted by two Malaysian patrol vessels, the brightly lit Azamara Quest made its way into Sandakan port on Sunday.

The vessel suffered an engine room fire on Friday that disabled its engines and left five crew members injured, one seriously.

Azamara Club Cruises, a unit of the world's second-largest cruise operator Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, said it was cancelling the rest of the 17-night Southeast Asian voyage that began in Hong Kong last week.

The ship was carrying 590 passengers, mostly holidaymakers from Europe, the US and Australia, as well as 411 crew.

Passengers 'upbeat'

In a statement on its website on Saturday, Azamara Club Cruises said engineers had been able to restore propulsion to the ship. Air conditioning had not been restored, but passengers were "calm and upbeat", it added.

As the vessel was operating under the Maltese flag, the authorities there launched an investigation into the incident by Transport Malta's Marine Safety Investigation Unit.

The engine room blaze was the latest in a string of accidents to have hit the luxury cruise industry in the past two months.

In January, the Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia ran aground off Tuscany, killing 32 people after it keeled over.

A month later, a fire struck the vessel's Costa Allegra sister ship in the Indian Ocean. The vessel, which was carrying more than 1,000 people, had to be towed to shore by a French fishing boat.