New surge of Rohingyas flee citing violence, hunger

Reuters reporters on the Bangladeshi side of the border, in Palong Khali district, saw several thousand people crossing from Myanmar's Rakhine State, filing along embankments between flooded fields and scrubby forest.

"Half of my village was burned down. I saw them do it," said Sayed Azin, 46, who said he had walked for eight days with his 80-year-old mother in a basket strung on a bamboo pole between him and his son.

Soldiers and Buddhist mobs had torched his village, he said.

"I left everything," he said, sobbing. "I can't find my relatives ... I can't take this any more."

Some new arrivals spoke of bloody attacks by Buddhist mobs on people trekking towards the border.

About 519,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts in Rakhine State sparked a ferocious military response.

Refugees and rights groups say the army and Buddhist vigilantes have engaged in a campaign of killing and arson aimed at driving the Rohingya out of Myanmar.

Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing and has labelled the militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who launched the initial attacks as terrorists who have killed civilians and burnt villages.

Among those fleeing were up to 35 people on a boat that capsized off the Bangladesh coast on Sunday. At least 12 of them drowned while 13 were rescued, Bangladeshi police said.

"We faced so many difficulties, for food and survival," survivor Sayed Hossein, 30, told Reuters, adding that his wife, three children, mother and father in law had drowned.

"We came here to save our lives."

The Myanmar government has said its "clearance operations" against the militants ended in early September and people had no reason to flee. But in recent days the government has reported large numbers of Muslims preparing to leave, with more than 17,000 people in one area alone.

The government cited worries about food and security as their reasons.

Some villagers in Rakhine State said food was running out because rice in the fields was not ready for harvest and the state government had closed village markets and restricted the transport of food, apparently to cut supplies to the militants.

"The situation's getting worse, we have no food and no guarantee of security," said a Rohingya resident of Hsin Hnin Pyar village on the south of the state's Buthidaung district.

Dhaka: At least 14 Rohingya migrants were killed after a boat carrying them capsized off the coast of Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district, police said on Monday.

"The bodies of 10 children, one man and one woman have been recovered," Xinhua news agency quoted a senior police official as saying.

He said the accident took place late Sunday night.

Law enforcement officials recovered the bodies which were floating in the Bay of Bengal near Shah Porir Island of the district which is now home to nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, the official added.

Eleven migrants were rescued and the official said the toll might increase as many were reported missing.

A search operation is underway.

The bodies of 132 Rohingyas and a Bangladeshi boat man were recovered from the Naf River since August 29 in at least 25 boat accidents.

Over half a million Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state amid a fresh wave of violence in the region since August 25. AGENCIES