Myanmar Muslims seek assistance in Bangladesh

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — With thousands of Rohingya refugees streaming daily across the swampy border into Bangladesh, one hospital was struggling Monday to treat dozens of men who had arrived with broken bones, bullet wounds and horrific stories of death.

Already, some 87,000 Rohingya Muslims have entered Bangladesh, fleeing violence in western Myanmar that erupted Aug. 25. The refugees have filled three older refugee camps set up in the 1990s.

“The existing refugees have taken in the new arrivals into their homes,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Vivian Tan. Still, thousands more were sheltering in local villages, or in open fields.

“What we desperately need is for land to be made available to get more emergency shelters up,” Tan said.

On Monday, at the Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital, doctors were treating 31 men who arrived with broken bones and bullet wounds, mostly to their limbs, according to the resident medical officer Dr. Shaheen Abdur Rahman Choudhury.

They all told similar stories of Myanmar soldiers opening fire randomly on their villages in western Myanmar on Aug. 26-27 and setting buildings aflame, Choudhury said.

The latest violence is part of an ongoing struggle between Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists. Bloody rioting that erupted in 2012 forced more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps in Bangladesh, where many still live today.