Nine aid workers have been killed after a truck filled with aid for Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh veered off a road and fell into a ditch.
The crash came hours after another aid shipment in the refugees’ home state in Burma was attacked by a Buddhist mob. Both shipments were from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as aid groups face different challenges on either side of the border:
There has been an influx of more than 420,000 refugees in less than a month in Bangladesh, and in Myanmar, government resistance and angry allegations from majority Buddhists that international organisations are favouring the long-persecuted Rohingya minority.
A Bangladeshi medical administrator, Aung Swi Prue, said six people died instantly in the truck crash near the border in south-eastern Bandarban district. Three people died after reaching a hospital, and 10 others were injured and are receiving treatment.
ICRC spokeswoman Misada Saif said all of those killed were Bangladeshi workers hired to distribute food packages to 500 Rohingya families.
Ms Saif said the truck belongs to the ICRC and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and was operated by a supplier who has been working for the two agencies for last couple of weeks. She said agency officials are “very shocked and sad”.
“Our thoughts are with the families of the dead. They were there to help the people who desperately need help,” she said.
The Rohingya exodus began on August 25 after Rohingya insurgent attacks on police set off a military crackdown.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of homes have been burned in what many Rohingya have described as a systematic effort by Burma’s military to drive them out.
The government has blamed the Rohingya, even saying they set fire to their own homes but the UN and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.
Most refugees have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled prior rounds of violence. Bandarban is a neighbouring district where thousands of Rohingya also have fled.
The violence in Burma occurred just across the border in Rakhine state, where police said a Buddhist mob threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers on Wednesday night as they tried to block Red Cross supplies from being loaded on to a boat.
The vessel was headed to an area where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been chased from their homes. No injuries were reported and police detained eight of the attackers.
Dozens of people arrived at a jetty in the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, as a boat was being loaded with bottled water, blankets, mosquito nets, food and other supplies. As the crowd swelled to 300, they started throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the officers, who responded by firing into the air, said police officer Phyo Wai Kyaw.
The government of the predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million said police and several monks showed up to try to defuse tensions. The shipment ultimately was loaded and sent to northern Rakhine state.
Though Burma’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, told diplomats this week humanitarian assistance was being sent to those who remain in northern Rakhine, the government has blocked all UN assistance to the area, granting access to only the Red Cross.
Buddhists in Rakhine have accused international aid agencies of favouring Rohingya, a group who Burma and many of its people contend migrated illegally from Bangladesh.
