Arakan News Agency
The number of Rohingya refugees who crossed the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh since August 25th has reached 389,000, UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Thursday.
“The last 24 hours have seen more than 1,000 people cross into Bangladesh,” he told a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York.
The estimates of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showed that nearly 40% of the Rohingya population had been forced to flee Rakhine State (Arakan) in western Myanmar.
“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had trucks full of water and emergency hygiene kits for thousands of Rohingya children heading to the city of Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh on the border with Myanmar.
“It is estimated that 60% of Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh are children,” the UN official said.
“The huge number of refugees has overshadowed the pre-set refugee camps,” UNICEF says. “There is a severe shortage of everything, mainly shelter, food and clean water.”
“UNICEF plans to scale up its emergency response on a large scale with the increasing number of Rohingya children in Bangladesh and appealed to the international community to provide more than $ 7 million to provide emergency support over the next four months,” he said.
Since August 25th, the Myanmar army has committed genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan (Rakhine) province, killing and injuring thousands of civilians, as well as displacing hundreds of thousands, according to Rohingya activists.
