Rohingya young suffering

A Rohingya Muslim woman feeds her daughter Friday at a refugee camp in Bangladesh as they and other refugees wait to be registered and allowed to build shelters. The United Nations child agency UNICEF said Friday that the children who make up most of the nearly 600,000 Rohingyas who have fled violence in Burma and are now in overcrowded, squalid camps in Bangladesh are experiencing a ”hell on earth.”

GENEVA — The children who make up most of the nearly 600,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Burma are seeing a “hell on earth” in overcrowded, muddy and squalid refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, according to the U.N. children’s agency.

UNICEF issued a report that documents the plight of children who account for 58 percent of the refugees who have poured into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, over the past eight weeks. Simon Ingram, the report’s author, said about one in five children in the area are “acutely malnourished.”

The report comes ahead of a donor conference Monday in Geneva to drum up funding for the Rohingya.

The refugees need clean water, food, sanitation, shelter and vaccines to help head off a possible outbreak of cholera — a potentially deadly water-borne disease.

Ingram also warned of threats posed by human traffickers and others who might exploit children in the refugee areas.

The influx of Rohingya refugees from Burma began Aug. 25 as the military began a crackdown it said was in response to militant attacks. Refugees have fled burning villages and provided accounts of security forces gunning down civilians.

AP/DAR YASIN