Nearly 14,000 children who have lost one or both parents are among the more than half a million Rohingya refugees who crossed in Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar, an official said Sunday. The UN says 536,000 mainly Rohingya refugees have arrived from Myanmar's strife-torn Rakhine state since August 25, the majority of them children.
Bangladesh's social services department said 13,751 children without a parent or parents were identified in a survey of the crowded refugee camps along its border, where charities warn that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding. "The majority of them said they lost one or both parents in the violence in Rakhine," Pritam Kumar Chowdhury, a department deputy director, told AFP. "Others said they didn't know what happened to their parents, and they came to Bangladesh with relatives."
The UN has described the violence in Rakhine as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, with displaced Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh describing whole villages being razed, gang rapes and massacres.
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