ALBAWABA - According to local Bangladeshi officials, approximately 8,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh amid the escalating violence in the western Rakhine state.
Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior official in charge of refugees for the Bangladeshi government stated "We have information that around 8,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh recently, mostly over the last two months,".
"Bangladesh is already over-burdened and unable to accommodate any more Rohingya," he told Reuters on Wednesday.
The conflict between Myanmar's ruling junta and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia comprised primarily of Buddhists, has escalated. The Bangladesh government has not previously released an estimate of how many Rohingya have crossed over in recent months.
Mohammad Touhid Hossain, Bangladesh's de facto foreign minister, told reporters late Tuesday that the administration will convene a "serious discussion at the cabinet" within the next two to three days to handle the problem.
While expressing compassion for the Rohingya, Hossain stated that the country is no longer able to give humanitarian assistance to more refugees.
On August 25, the seventh anniversary of the military campaign in 2017 that drove tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar into camps, hundreds of them demanded a stop to the bloodshed and a safe return to their country.
With little chance of returning to Myanmar, where they are mainly denied citizenship and other fundamental rights, more than a million Rohingya are being housed in congested camps in southern Bangladesh.
The current wave of violence is the worst the Rohingya have seen since the military-led assault in Myanmar in 2017, which the UN declared to have genocidal intent.
