Alwaght- The UN warned more than 100,000 Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmarese regime's violence are in grave danger in muddy camps of neighboring Bangladesh where landslides threaten their lives when the mid-year monsoon season begins.
There are some 1,000,000 Rohingya Muslims in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, after 688,000 fled Myanmar's Muslim-populated Rakhine state due to atrocities committed by extremist Buddhist gangs backed by regime's military.
According to a UN humanitarian report, “Landslide and flood risk hazard mapping reveal that at least 100,000 people are in grave danger from these risks and require relocation to new areas or within the neighborhoods that they live in,” Reuters reported on Monday.
“The lack of space remains the main challenge for the sector as sites are highly congested leading to extremely hard living conditions with no space for service provisions and facilities. In addition, congestion brings increased protections risks and favors disease outbreak such as the diphtheria outbreak currently escalating in most of the sites.”
The UN report also said there had been an increase in cases of mumps in the past few weeks, and Rohingya refugees and host communities had never been vaccinated against the highly contagious disease, which is rarely fatal but can cause complications such as meningitis.
Most of the Rohingya refugees - almost 585,000 - are in an overcrowded area called Kutupalong-Balukhali.
“A high percentage of the land is unsuitable for human settlement as risks of flooding and landslides are high and are further aggravated by the congestion and extensive terracing of the hills,” the UN report said.
“The anticipated flooding and landslides in the upcoming monsoon season will make a bad situation much worse.”
A recent engineering assessment said all roads in the camp would be inaccessible for trucks, and the World Food Programme is considering using porters to distribute food, minutes of a January 24 meeting of aid agencies involved in logistics said.
The Bangladeshi government allocated 2,000 acres (809 hectares) for a new camp in Ukhia, prompting an influx of people before anything was ready.
“Humanitarian partners are now building necessary infrastructure in challenging conditions, with extremely limited space,” the UN report said.
Myanmar's troops have been committing killings and rapes, making arbitrary arrests, and carrying out mass arson attacks to destroy houses in Rakhine. Only in its first month, the military clampdown killed some 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including more than 700 children, according to the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders.