Arakan News Agency
A large number of Rohingya who fled village of Inn Din in Myanmar and the families of the victims told AFP that the victims were civilians, not rebels.
The Myanmar army admitted on Wednesday that soldiers had killed those ten Rohingya detainees in cold blood , in an unprecedented declaration.
“The residents of Inn Din village and members of the security forces have admitted the killing of 10 Bangladeshi terrorists,” the army’s office said on Facebook, citing that it is killing of local Rakhine Buddhist residents.
About 655,000 minority Rohingya Muslims from Arakan province have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August because of military operations the United Nations said amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.
But the army’s announcement angered the families of the victims who fled to neighboring Bangladesh where a reporter for AFP met a number of its members.
Marjan, 30, a mother of five, lost her husband, Abdulmalek, in the massacre. She confirmed that he was studying in a Quranic school and had nothing to do with anything else.
“When the Rakhine Buddhists burned our houses we took refuge in a neighboring island. The army found our hideouts and chose 10 to 15 men to meet them. ”
“The rest of us, mostly women and children, fled the island and came to Bangladesh,” she said. She later learned that the group chosen by the army had been killed.
Hussein Ahmed al-Majid from Inn Din said the victims had nothing to do with the rebels. “They were fishermen, farmers, woodcutters and clerics,” he told AFP.
“I managed to escape, and if I could not, I would rot today with my friends in the mass grave,” he said.
The Rohingyas, who fled their villages to neighboring Bangladesh, gave identical testimonies of massacres and abuses committed by Myanmar troops and civilians belonging to the Rakhine Buddhist
But the authorities deny the army committed abuses against the Rohingya.
Meanwhile, MSF reported that at least 6,700 Rohingyas were killed between the end of August and the end of September.
