Wild elephants trample to death 2 Rohingya refugees
COX’S BAZAR: Wild elephants trampled two elderly Rohingya refugees to death yesterday as they slept underneath a plastic sheet near a forest in Bangladesh, police said.
The incident occurred on the outskirts of Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district, where tens of thousands of Rohingya have set up makeshift shelters since fleeing violence across the border in Myanmar.
“We can confirm that two people were killed by wild elephants,” local police chief Abul Khaer said, adding both the deceased were Rohingya civilians.
More than 410,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since a fresh outbreak of violence erupted on Aug 25 in Myanmar’s westernmost Rakhine state.
Space at established refugee camps in Bangladesh has all but been exhausted, with new arrivals hacking away trees and other vegetation anywhere they can to erect shelters from the monsoon rain.
Many newly arrived refugees are camping in the open or along roadsides, where they rush aid trucks for food and other desperately needed supplies.
Rohingya elder Kamal Hossain said the two refugees killed by elephants were new arrivals, who had taken refuge in a forested area near the sprawling Kutupalong camp.
“It happened early Monday morning when the Rohingya were sleeping under plastic tents. The wild elephants trampled the two elderly civilians to death,” Mr Hossain said.
Many of the displaced have arrived with horrific tales of killings and rapes by Myanmar’s security forces and Buddhist militias.
The latest violence erupted after Rohingya militant raids on 30 police posts in Rakhine triggered a military crackdown.
The UN calls the army fightback a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” with villages set ablaze to drive Rohingya civilians out.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh police braced yesterday as more than 10,000 Islamist hardliners marched on the Myanmar embassy to protest against the violence driving the Rohingya out of the Buddhist-majority nation.
A huge crowd of demonstrators in white robes chanting “God is great” assembled outside Bangladesh’s largest mosque ahead of the planned “siege” of the Myanmar embassy in the capital Dhaka.
Police ramped up security amid fears of violence after the hardline Hefazat-eIslami group vowed to station hundreds of thousands of followers outside the diplomatic mission.
“So far, more than 10,000 people have joined the protest,” local police chief Mahmudul Haq said, adding extra officers had been deployed across the city.
Officials from Hefazat-e-Islami put the figure much higher, saying more followers would join the demonstration throughout the day.
Separate rallies in Bangladesh attracted at least 15,000 supporters who chanted slogans against Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.