The United Nations raised alarm Friday saying over 45,000 minority Rohingya have fled escalating combating in conflict-torn Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
The report of a brand new exodus comes alongside allegations of killings and burnings of property.
“Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent days by the fighting in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships,” U.N. rights workplace spokesperson, Elizabeth Throssell, instructed reporters in Geneva.
“An estimated 45,000 Rohingya have reportedly fled to an area on the Naf River near the border with Bangladesh, seeking protection,” she stated.
Clashes have rocked Rakhine because the Arakan Army (AA) attacked forces of the ruling junta in November, ending a cease-fire that had largely held since a navy coup in 2021.
The AA says it’s combating for extra autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine inhabitants within the state, which can also be house to round 600,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
Hundreds of 1000’s of Rohingya fled Rakhine in 2017 throughout a crackdown by the navy that’s now the topic of a United Nations genocide court docket case.
“Over a million Rohingya are already in Bangladesh, having fled past purges,” Throssell identified.
U.N. rights chief Volker Türk was urging Bangladesh and different international locations “to provide effective protection to those seeking it, in line with international law, and to ensure international solidarity with Bangladesh in hosting Rohingya refugees in Myanmar,” she stated.
Throssell warned of “clear and present risks of a serious expansion of violence” in Rakhine.
She pointed to the start of a battle for Maungdaw city, the place the navy has outposts and the place a big Rohingya neighborhood lives.
“In this appalling situation, civilians are once more victimized, killed, their properties destroyed and looted, their demands for safety and security ignored,” she stated.
“They are again forced to flee their homes in a recurring nightmare of suffering.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com