February 2, 2017

Rohingya: Chased from Myanmar, unwelcome in Bangladesh

Ambia Khatun grabbed her two children and dashed out of her burning house on the early morning of November 23 last year. A teary-eyed Khatun said her husband could not make out of the house as the army started firing.

Thirty-seven-year-old Khatun is from Kearipara village in western Myanmar's Maungdaw town. She says she fled along with other Rohingya families, leaving behind her husband's body, as rows of houses were set on fire by the army.

Along with 2,500 Rohingya families, she has taken refuge at a makeshift camp in Leda at eastern Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar near the border with Myanmar.

"I grabbed my children and ran towards the forest and waited there with several hundred people," she told Al Jazeera at her camp in Leda village.

World Food Programme and other local NGOs have come forward to provide food and emergency medical aid, as Bangladesh has refused to register Rohingya Muslims as refugees.

Nearly 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since October when the army launched a crackdown against the Muslim minority after a deadly attack on a military post. (Courtesy of aljazeera.com)

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