Teknaf (Bangladesh): A small boat packed with refugees fleeing war-torn Myanmar sunk while crossing a river to Bangladesh on Tuesday, with at least 10 drowning, including young children, a local councillor said.
Adnan Chowdhury, the government administrator of Bangladesh's Teknaf border town, said the boat was carrying about 29 Muslim Rohingya people from Myanmar. "So far we've recovered 10 bodies, they are all Rohingya," Rashid Mia, a councillor in Teknaf, told AFP. "Several people swam ashore".
But several people were missing, Mia added. Police said the group had fled their villages in Myanmar's war-torn Rakhine state and the small craft sank in the Naf river. Clashes have rocked Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked junta forces in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021.
Bangladesh is home to around one million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled Rakhine in 2017 after a military crackdown now the subject of a genocide investigation at a United Nations court.
