Survivors say hundreds killed in Rakhine State massacre

Khantun, 40, said her 10-year-old daughter was among the dead. Other family members had been abducted, their fates unknown, she said.

She and her surviving family made it to Bangladesh on Saturday, having hidden by the riverbank for several days before fleeing on a dinghy.

Mohammed Hubaib, a 12-year-old from a different family, also estimated he saw the bodies of about 400 people, some of whom had drowned after their boats were attacked during the crossing. His grandfather, 70-year-old Mohammed Kasim, said he “witnessed the AA drone strikes kill more than 250 Rohingya in front of me, including children and women” before he passed out.

A boy sheltering with Kasim at Teknaf is so ill he cannot speak or move.

In addition to the drone attacks by the riverbanks, more than 100 Rohingya may have been killed in Maungdaw town, which is now believed to be clear of junta forces. Reports are also emerging from survivors in Bangladesh that people were drowned or remained captives of pirates who had presented themselves as rescuers, only to hold the escapees to ransom.

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In a statement, the AA said, “we respectfully announce that these deaths did not occur in areas under our control and are not related to our organisation.” The group continued to fight the regime and the “extremist” Muslim groups, which were using “weapons and manpower to … prevent innocent civilians from reaching safe places.”

The AA and military junta both view the Muslim Rohingya as unwelcome interlopers from Bangladesh, though families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Allegations of abuses by the AA are controversial because the group’s armed force has played a major role in winning battlefield victories for the resistance movement against military rule. There is much credible evidence of atrocities carried out by the military government’s forces, but reported abuses by resistance groups have been minimal.

International aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bangladesh said it had treated more than 50 people in the last week for injuries consistent with a war zone.

“We’re talking about gunshots, land mines, mortar shells,” deputy Bangladesh representative Anthony Caswell Perez said.

“This is indicative of an escalation of violence in Rakhine. To actually be able to comment on what’s happening on the other side is very difficult because we don’t have a presence in Rakhine State at the border. But something is happening.

“And considering that over half of the patients that we have treated are children and women, that is indicative of indiscriminate attacks against civilians.”

MSF earlier said it had received witness reports of “hundreds” of people killed, but the toll remains unverified. If confirmed, the incident would mark one of the worst atrocities since the 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Witnesses have said thousands more Rohingya had been attempting to get into Bangladesh from Maungdaw, but had been blocked on the water by junta vessels and on land by Bangladeshi authorities.

The Rohingya are among the world’s most persecuted people – even Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate with legions of supporters around the world, refused to stand up for the Rohingya during a brutal 2017 military crackdown alleged at the International Court of Justice to be genocide.

Fighting has intensified in Myanmar since offensives by rebel groups in October last year. In a serious blow, the regime appears to have recently lost the Shan State city of Lashio, home of the north-eastern command. While its forces remain strong in the major cities of the lowlands, elsewhere they have suffered serious losses of ground, personnel and morale. Desperation has manifested in policies of forced conscriptions and attacks on civilian areas.

The UN reported in June that at least 5280 civilians, more than a third of them women and children, had been killed by the military junta since the coup. Close to three million people were internally displaced and more than 20,000 who had stood up to the regime remained in detention.

The alleged brutality of the AA toward the minority Rohingya, however, underscores how separating good from the bad in the contest with myriad competing interests and complex historical antecedents is not straightforward.

ASEAN’s response – the “five-point consensus”, which regime leader Min Aung Hlaing has reneged on – has been ineffective. Following a meeting of foreign ministers in Laos last month, the regional bloc committed to the same plan again and congratulated itself on the delivery of $US1.9 million worth of aid.

Delivery of vital services has been stymied by the fighting and the junta’s control of major access routes and the levers of government. Even so, aid agencies say they can make a difference and have pleaded for the international community to do more.

The UN’s own 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Myanmar calls for $US 994 million ($1.51 billion). Only $US214 million has been forthcoming, continuing a years-long trend of mass shortfalls. According to UN figures, Australia has contributed slightly over eight per cent of that amount.