12 Rohingya killed after boat capsizes

A boat carrying Rohingya Muslim refugees to Bangladesh capsized and at least 12 people, most of them children, drowned, police said on Oct. 8, the latest victims of violence in Myanmar that has forced more than half a million people to flee.

The boat sank near Shah Porir Dwip, on the southern tip of Bangladesh, late on Oct. 8 with up to 35 people on board, Bangladeshi police said.

Bangladeshi fishermen have been cramming their boats since late August with desperate Rohingya fleeing a Myanmar security crackdown that the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing.

Bangladeshi police officer Mohammed Mainuddin told Reuters that 12 bodies - 10 children, one woman and a man - had been recovered.
Some 519,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on police and military posts in Rakhine State sparked a ferocious response from Myanmar's security forces.

More than six weeks after the violence erupted, Rohingya continue to arrive in Bangladesh, which was already home to 400,000 members of the Myanmar Muslim minority before the latest crisis.

Mostly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens, even though many have lived in Rakhine for generations.

Bangladesh is insisting that they will all have to go home. Myanmar has responded by saying it will take back those who can be verified as genuine refugees.