At least 20 Rohingya people dead after boat sinks off Bangladesh

DHAKA, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — The death toll from a sunken boat packed with Rohingya people fleeing from Myanmar in a border river in southeastern Bangladesh rose to 20 on Thursday after another 14 bodies were retrieved, said a local police official.
Chailau Marma, additional superintendent of police in Bangladesh‘s Cox’s Bazar district, some 292 km southeast of capital Dhaka, told Xinhua that 14 more bodies were recovered from the Bangladesh coast in the morning.
“Six bodies were recovered  by Wednesday night,” he said.
The police official said so far there was no exact information about the accident which occurred in Naf river.
“We’re yet to find a survivor to know what exactly happened at time and how many Rohingya people were on board boat which capsized in Naf River dividing Bangladesh and Myanmar.”
The boat reportedly anchored near the Shah Porir Island of Bay of Bengal for a couple of days as the Bangladesh forces did not allow them to enter into the Bangladesh territory.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Wednesday that More than 18,000 Rohingya people had fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar’s western Rakhain state amid a fresh wave of violence in the region since Aug. 25.
Sources said thousands of Rohingyas people from Myanmar, mostly women, children and elderly people, have still been waiting in no-man’s land along Bangladesh‘s southeastern Naikhyangchhari border to enter Bangladesh territory.
Bangladesh, which shares about 271 km of border with Myanmar, has refused to repeated local and foreign appeals to accept Rohingyas fleeing the coordinated rebel attacks on Myanmar border posts on Aug. 25 that killed 100 people, including some 80 insurgents and 12 members of the security forces.
Bangladesh‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Bangladesh had taken note of renewed clashes after the attacks on the Myanmar Border Guard Police posts in the Rakhine state on Friday.
Recalling the influx of Myanmar people into Bangladesh due to similar military operations in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on Oct. 9, 2016 that resulted in about 85,000 civilians crossing over to Bangladesh, a Bangladesh Foreign Ministry official expressed serious concern at the possibility of the recurrence of such a situation.
He said Bangladesh has already hosted about 400,000 Myanmar nationals.  Enditem