11,000 ROHINGYA MUSLIMS FLEE TO BANGLADESH IN 24 HOURS: UNHCR

GENEVA: Around 11,000 Rohingyas crossed over into neighbouring Bangladesh in a single day in a fresh surge of refugees fleeing an ongoing military offensive in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“We’re back in a situation of full alert as far as influxes are concerned. It is a big increase to see 11,000,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Adrian Edwards said at a news briefing.

“UNHCR is working with the Bangladesh authorities on a transit centre to prepare for a potential refugee influx in the coming days,” Edwards said.

Over half a million refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25, fleeing a military crackdown that followed attacks by Rohingya militants on police posts.

Meanwhile, in Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, the police said the bodies of another nine refugees washed up after an overloaded boat carrying scores of desperate Rohingyas sank in rough seas on Sunday, taking the death toll to 23, the Daily Star reported.

Among the nine, three bodies were recovered on Monday night and six bodies early Tuesday in the Naf river, which separates Bangladesh from Myanmar. More than half of the victims in the latest disaster were children, officials said.

Meanwhile, UN aid agencies are helping the Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar into Bangladesh, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The number of Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh since late August has reached 519,000, an increase by 4,000 over the weekend, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Aid workers continued to work with the Bangladeshi government to scale up their operations, and 515,000 people had been provided with food assistance as of Wednesday, said Dujarric on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

The revised humanitarian appeal for $434 million, which seeks to help 1.2 million people, is currently 24 per cent funded, said the spokesman. The International organization for Migration says that at least 13 Rohingya refugees — mostly children — drowned when a fishing boat carrying them to Bangladesh capsized in stormy weather. There were approximately 60 refugees aboard a wooden fishing vessel when it left Myanmar under cover of darkness, hoping to avoid patrols on both sides of the border, survivors told the IOM.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners will roll out a vaccination campaign on Tuesday in Cox’s Bazar, where most of the refugees are housed. The organization aims to deliver cholera vaccinations to 650,000 people initially, followed by a second round to 250,000 children.