Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh): Nearly 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state into Bangladesh in the 15 days since new violence erupted, the United Nations said on Saturday.
The figure has jumped about 20,000 in a day.
"Some 290,000 Rohingya arrived in Bangladesh since August 25," said Joseph Tripura, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency.
Officials said the UN has found more Rohingya in villages and areas which were previously not included by relief agencies.
Most of the Rohingya are arriving by foot or boat across Bangladesh's 278 kilometre (172 mile) border with Myanmar, a fourth of which is made up by the Naf river.
The UN said there was a sharp increase in arrivals on Wednesday, when more than 300 boats arrived in Bangladesh.
On Thursday the UN had put the number at 164,000.
The Rohingya have long been subjected to discrimination in Buddhist majority Myanmar, which denies them citizenship.
Myanmar's government regards them as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even if they have lived in the country for generations.
Refugee camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar already had about 300,000 Rohingya before the upsurge in violence and are now overwhelmed.
The tens of thousands of new arrivals have nowhere to shelter from monsoon rains.
The latest figure takes the number of Rohingya refugees who have arrived in Bangladesh since violence erupted last October to 377,000.
Those flocking into Bangladesh have given harrowing accounts of killings, rape and arson by Myanmar's army. The Myanmar authorities deny any wrongdoing.
Most have walked for days and the United Nations says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter, food and water.
Meanwhile, Bangladeshi security forces were on alert for attempts by homegrown Islamist militants to use the violence against Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Myanmar to recruit new fighters, a top official said on Saturday.
Nearly 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state for Muslim-dominated Bangladesh in the 15 days since the latest fighting erupted, according to the United Nations.
Many of those have arrived with harrowing accounts of deaths and rapes at the hands of Myanmar troops and Buddhist militias.
Images purportedly showing atrocities against the Rohingya have flooded Bangladeshi social media, triggering an outpouring of sympathy among locals, who have historical ties with the community.
Monirul Islam, the head of Dhaka's police counter- terrorism unit, said forces were on the lookout for any efforts to use the violence against Rohingyas to rally homegrown extremists.
"We have taken appropriate surveillance measures and are on alert against the move by the inactive militants to draw inspiration from this (violence against Rohingya) or use it for recruitment purposes," he told reporters.
Bangladesh has a history of homegrown extremist groups, including those who fought alongside the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Russians before returning home to form their own groups.
Officials said they were particularly concerned that some of the homegrown groups would recruit students from the thousands of Islamic seminaries in the country to fight for the rights of the Rohingya.
"But we are all on alert so that no quarters can create disorder by exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar," he said.
Several fringe Islamist leaders have already issued calls to arm Rohingya refugees and help liberate Arakan, the Bengali name for Rakhine.
Bangladesh's government has a long-standing policy of "zero tolerance" towards extremism and hosting insurgent groups of neighbouring nations.