The bodies of 20 Rohingya Muslims were pulled out of a river Thursday along the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, across which thousands have fled this week. Twelve of the dead were children. In just one week, almost 50,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their homes in Myanmar's Rakhine state, according to estimates by the UN. As many as 27,000 of the displaced people crossed the Bangladeshi border to camps in areas around Cox's Bazar, while a further 20,000 are in no-man's land between the two countries.
"The worsening cycle of violence is of grave concern and must be broken urgently," the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee said in a news release Thursday.
The exodus began last Friday after the Myanmar government intensified "clearance operations" following an attack by Rohingya militants on border posts that left 12 security officials dead.
The Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, are considered some of the most persecuted people in the world. Myanmar, also known as Burma, considers them Bangladeshi interlopers, and Bangladesh says they're Burmese.
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