Bodies Wash up as Boat Carrying Rohingya Fleeing Myanmar Capsizes

Cox Bazar, Bangladesh: Bangladeshi border guards on Thursday recovered the bodies of 20 Rohingya women and children whose boat capsized as they fled violence in Myanmar, an official said, amid pressure on Dhaka to shelter thousands marooned in no man's land at the border.

Around 27,400 Rohingya Muslims have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar since Friday, three UN sources said, after Rohingya insurgents wielding sticks, knives and crude bombs attacked police posts and an army base in Rakhine state, leading to clashes that have killed at least 117 people.

The violence comes amid reports of Buddhist vigilantes burning Rohingya villages. Reuters reporters on Thursday saw a huge fire across the Naf River on the Myanmar side of the border.

The sources said around 20,000 Rohingya were still stranded in no man's land between the two countries, with one predicting the figure could jump to 30,000 later on Thursday as people flee the worst violence involving Myanmar's Muslim minority in at least five years.

Myanmar has evacuated thousands of Buddhists from Rakhine following the fighting that has mainly killed Rohingya insurgents but also security officials, according to the Myanmar government.

The treatment of about 1.1 million Rohingya in Myanmar is the biggest challenge facing national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been accused by Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution. (See graphic, http://reut.rs/2wknZBs)

On Thursday, the bodies of 11 Rohingya children and nine women washed up on the Bangladesh side of the Naf River as their boat overturned, said Ariful Islam, a commander with Bangladesh's border guards.

The bodies of two Rohingya women and two children were recovered on Wednesday after their boat was fired on by Myanmar's Border Guard Police, Islam said.

In the Bangladeshi border district of Cox's Bazar, makeshift camps for the displaced set up since similar violence last October were being expanded.

One of those arrivals, Mohammed Rashid, 45, wore a surgical dressing under his eye, which he said was the result of bullet splinters hitting him after the Myanmar army opened fire on a group of Rohingya.

He said about 100 people made their way to the border together, and that he saw explosions and people dying.

"We hid in the forest for two days and then we were stopped at the border, but we got through. We heard that the houses in our village have burned down," Rashid told Reuters at the camp.

"BURNING, BURNING"

Chris Lewa, of the Rohingya monitoring group the Arakan Project, said it appeared Myanmar was trying to drive out the entire Rohingya population, given that, unlike in the past, Rakhine vigilantes were now "actively participating in the burning of villages".

"What we're hearing is burning, burning, burning," she said. "And it seems to be spreading from south to north."

The violence marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October, when a similar but much smaller series of Rohingya attacks on security posts prompted a brutal military response dogged by allegations of rights abuses.

The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. Bangladesh is also growing increasingly hostile to Rohingya, more than 400,000 of whom live in the poor South Asian country after fleeing persecution in Myanmar since the early 1990s.

Bangladesh on Wednesday pushed back 366 Rohingya trying to enter the country mainly by small wooden boats, though thousands of others have set up temporary camps along the porous land border between the countries, borders guards said.

The International Organization for Migration joined U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in appealing to Bangladesh to admit people caught on the border. Bangladesh has insisted they don't have the resources, though many have slipped in, mainly at night.

"Limited resources mean that the IMO and its humanitarian partners in Cox's Bazar are now struggling to cope with the influx of new arrivals," the U.N. migration agency said.

Various humanitarian agencies and countries including Muslim-majority Malaysia have urged Myanmar to protect civilians during military operations.

Myanmar says it has the right to defend itself from attack, adding that security personnel were told to protect innocent civilians.