18,500 Rohingya flee
OIC slams renewed violence
MAUNGDAW, Myanmar, Aug 30, (Agencies): At least 18,500 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh since fighting erupted in Myanmar’s neighbouring Rakhine state six days ago, the International Organization for Migration said Wednesday.
Plumes of smoke billowed from several burning villages in the worst-hit section of the state, according to an AFP reporter on a government-led trip to the area, as the violence showed little sign of abating despite security sweeps by Myanmar’s police and troops.
The streets of Maungdaw — northern Rakhine’s largest town — were virtually deserted as fires flickered among charred remains of houses and the occasional burst of gunfire echoed in the distance.
The clashes began on Friday after militants from Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority community staged deadly surprise raids on police posts.
Confirmed
At least 110 people, including 11 state officials, have been confirmed dead and thousands of Rohingya have poured across the border to Bangladesh despite Dhaka’s attempts to stop them. “As of last night, 18,500 people have come across,” Chris Lom, the IOM’s Asia-Pacific spokesman, told AFP, adding an unknown number were still stuck on the Myanmar side of the border.
An estimated 6,000 Rohingya on
two decades due to years of bickering by politicians concerned it could redraw the political map and potentially weaken their power base and access to federal Tuesday massed at the “zero line” border with Bangladesh, days after the area came under mortar and machine gun fire by Myanmar security forces. The Rohingya, the world’s largest stateless minority and subject to severe restrictions on their movements, are barred from officially crossing.
Authorities
Bangladeshi authorities on Wednesday toughened patrols in a bid to prevent more arrivals in a country that already hosts an estimated 400,000 Rohingya, albeit in abject conditions. Rohingya have sneaked across the land border in large number or swum the Naf River which marks part of the frontier.
But tragedy befell some of them. The bodies of two Rohingya women and two children washed up on Bangladeshi soil on Wednesday, an official there told AFP, drowned after their rickety boat capsized.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned Tuesday the renewed outbreak of violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State.
The condemnation comes in the wake of ongoing violent and bloody confrontations between Rohingya rebels and state police and army forces across several districts and villages in the state since last week.
funding.
The previous census in 1998 put the population of Lahore at roughly 5.1 million people. Preliminary results of the 2017 census released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) late Monday showed it had surged by a whopping 116 percent to 11,126,285 people, making it larger than Portugal, according to figures provided by the CIA World Factbook.
The results, which officials said could have a margin of error of up to two percent, mark a remarkable shift for Lahore, capital of Punjab province, the wealthiest in the country and a power base for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party. (AFP)