Truck carrying aid for refugees crashes, killing 9
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A truck filled with aid for Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh veered off a road and fell into a ditch Thursday morning, killing at least nine aid workers, hours after another aid shipment in the refugees’ violence-ridden home state in Myanmar was attacked by a Buddhist mob.
Both shipments were from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Aid groups face different challenges on both sides of the border: an influx of more than 420,000 refugees in less than a month in Bangladesh, and in Myanmar, government resistance and angry allegations from majority Buddhists that international organizations are favoring the long-persecuted Rohingya minority.
A Bangladeshi medical administrator, Aung Swi Prue, said six people died instantly in the truck crash near the border in southeastern Bandarban district. Three people died after reaching a hospital, and 10 others were injured and are receiving treatment.
Red Cross spokeswoman Misada Saif said all of those killed were Bangladeshi workers hired to distribute food packages to 500 Rohingya families.
Saif said the truck belongs to the Red Cross and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and was operated by a supplier who has been working for the two agencies for the past couple of weeks. She said agency officials are “very shocked and sad.”
“Our thoughts are with the families of the dead. They were there to help the people who desperately need help,” she said.
The Rohingya exodus began Aug. 25, after Rohingya insurgent attacks on police set off a military crackdown.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of homes have been burned in what many Rohingya have described as a systematic effort by Myanmar’s military to drive them out. The government has blamed the Rohingya, even saying they set fire to their own homes, but the U.N. and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.
Most refugees have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled earlier rounds of violence. Bandarban is a neighboring district where thousands of Rohingya also have fled.