Another Rohingya Killed in a Landmine Blast Near Bangladesh Border

A Rohingya man was
killed in a suspected landmine blast along the Bangladesh-Burma border,
officials said yesterday, the second such incident this month.

More than one million Rohingyas have been living in camps in southeast Bangladesh after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar’s Arakan state.

Dhaka has previously accused Myanmar security forces of planting mines along the frontier to prevent the refugees from returning - a charge Myanmar rejects.

A loud explosion was heard early yesterday in Ghumdum border area, although the blast appeared to have occurred inside Myanmar, Border Guard Bangladesh regional commander Ali Haider Azad Ahmed told AFP.

“Our men heard the sound which was apparently of a landmine blast. The man’s body was lying near the border,” he told AFP.

Officials said the victim was Abdul Majid, a refugee in his 20s from Kutupalong D1, the world’s largest refugee camp, in the Bangladesh district of Cox’s Bazar.

Dil Mohammad, a Rohingya community leader who lives in the tiny strip of no man’s land in a small settlement of 4,000 of Rohingya, said it took place near their makeshift homes.

“This is very frightening for us,” he told AFP.

At the height of the mass exodus when tens of thousands of Rohingya poured into Bangladesh every day, several were killed or seriously hurt in suspected landmine explosions along the border.

Rights groups Amnesty International said then it had documented what appeared to be the targeted use of landmines along a narrow stretch forming part of the northwestern border of Rakhine.

Anti-personnel mines were banned under a global treaty in 1997.

AFP