2,000 ROHINGYA MUSLIMS CROSS INTO BANGLADESH

Myanmar government evacuates 4,000 non-Muslim villagers

YANGON 12 members of the security forces, the government said.

Fighting involving the military and hundreds of Rohingya across Rakhine continued on Saturday, with the fiercest clashes taking place on the outskirts of the town of Maungdaw, according to residents and the government.

The attacks marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered in the region since last October, when a similar but much smaller Rohingya attack prompted a brutal military operation beset by allegations of serious human rights abuses.

The treatment of approximately 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar has emerged as the biggest challenge for national leader Aung San Suu Kyi. On Friday, she condemned the raids in which insurgents wielding guns, sticks and homemade bombs assaulted 30 police stations and an army base.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been accused of not speaking out for the long-persecuted minority and of defending the army’s counteroffensive after the October attacks.

Myanmar’s Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Minister Win Myat Aye said on Saturday, that the ministry was arranging accommodation for non-Muslims at places such as monasteries, government offices and police stations in major cities.

“We are providing food to people cooperating with the state government and local authorities. This is a conflict situation so it is difficult to say who is right or wrong,” he said.

Panic-stricken Rakhine residents in ethnically mixed or nonMuslim towns have readied knives and sticks to defend themselves. Many were stranded in villages located in Muslim-majority areas as clashes continued and some roads had been mined, residents said.

“The clashes continued all day yesterday on the main road. There are a lot of landmines,” a journalist from Maungdaw town said yesterday.

“I don’t think local authorities have enough food for the people. The prices of commodities are rising day by day.”

Bangladesh border guards said 2,000 Rohingya refugees had crossed into Bangladesh since Friday.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry said it was concerned that thousands of “unarmed Myanmar nationals” had assembled near the border to enter the country. Reuters