Rohingya relief truck crash kills nine, injures 10

DHAKA: A truck carrying relief supplies for Rohingya Muslim refugees skidded off a hilly road in Bangladesh and plunged into a paddy field yesterday, killing nine people and injuring 10, police and aid workers said.

The accident happened in a district near the Myanmar border where refugees have been arriving since late last month to escape a Myanmar military offensive against insurgents that the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing.

‘‘Six died on the spot while three died on the way to hospital,’’ A. K. M. Jahangir, a senior official with the Red Crescent relief group, told Reuters.

Some of the injured were in critical condition, he added.

The dead and injured were labourers, travelling in the truck to help distribute the aid supplies.

Meanwhile, Buddhist protesters in Myanmar threw petrol bombs to try to block a Red Cross shipment of aid to Muslims in Rakhine state, before police fired in the air to disperse them.

Several hundred people tried to stop a boat being loaded with about 50 tonnes of aid at a dock in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe, a government information office said.

The aid shipment was bound for the north of the Rakhine State where insurgent attacks on August 25 sparked a military backlash. — Reuters