Myanmar police fire warning shots in Rakhine as mob attacks aid boat

Communal tensions remain sky high across Rakhine where raids by Rohingya militants at the end of last month sparked a massive army crackdown and an unprecedented exodus of the Muslim group which the UN has called "ethnic cleansing".

Stranded after their villages burned to the ground, many Rohingya Muslims left inside Rakhine are in especially desperate need of aid.

The zone worst-hit by communal violence remains under a virtual army lockdown, although authorities have promised to allow safe passage for relief. Aid is an incendiary issue in Rakhine, which is poor and scored by ethnic and religious hatred.

Ethnic Rakhine believe foreign aid agencies ignore their needs and are biased towards the Rohingya — a minority denied citizenship in Myanmar and branded 'Bengali' outsiders. A 300-strong mob in the Buddhist-majority state capital Sittwe massed late Wednesday at a jetty where a boat — carrying 50 tonnes relief materials including clothes, water buckets and mosquito nets — was preparing for the journey up river into Maungdaw.

They forced "the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) to unload the aid from the boat and prevented the boat from leaving," Global New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday, quoting Myanmar's Information Committee.

Police officers arrived as the crowd grew near the jetty, while Buddhist monks also tried to calm the mob, but people began to hurl "stones and Molotov (cocktails) at the riot police" the report said.

Eight people were detained and several police were injured before order was restored late at night.

Before last month's crisis, tens of thousands of Rohingya — as well as some ethnic Rakhines — displaced by previous rounds of violence were already dependent on foreign and local aid groups.

Meanwhile, the truck, hired by Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and the International Red Cross Committee to carry relief materials for Rohingya refugees, skidded off the road after its driver lost control near the Chhakdala border post, some 50 kilometres from Cox's Bazar.

"Six of them died instantly as the accident occurred this morning when the truck skidded off the road," chairman of the village council told reporters in Badbarban.

Nine people died and five others sustained injures in the accident, police said. A spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the truck was carrying food supplies for 500 families for 21 days. The crash victims were all workers who were hired to unload and carry on foot the relief material to remote refugee camps as no vehicle could reach the rugged site, she said.