First month of Burma purge left 6,700 Rohingya dead

AT LEAST 6,700 Rohingya Muslims died “horrific” deaths in the first month of Burma’s military crackdown in the country’s northern Rakhine state, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealed yesterday.

The figure, which includes at least 730 children under the age of five, most of whom were shot, is the highest estimated death toll yet of the violence that erupted on Aug 25, triggering a mass exodus of more than 620,000 Rohingya refugees from Burma into neighbouring Bangladesh.

“What we uncovered was staggering, in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member had died as a result of violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely injured,” said Sidney Wong, the aid group’s medical director. MSF’S findings come from six surveys of more than 2,434 households sheltering in the refugee camps along the Bangladeshi border.

While the organisation said that the figures were a conservative estimate, the death toll still soars above Burmese military claims that only 400 people, including 376 “terrorists” were killed during their operations.

The new evidence backs United Nations claims that the Rohingya were targeted in mass atrocities by the Burmese security forces. The survey shows that 69 per cent of the victims died from gunshot wounds, 9 per cent were burned alive inside houses and 5 per cent died from beatings.