Up to 30,000 people have been displaced by violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, half of them over the course of last weekend when dozens of people died in clashes with the military, the UN said on Friday.
Troops have poured into a strip of land along the Bangladesh border, an area which is largely home to the stateless Muslim Rohingya minority, since coordinated attacks on police posts last month. The Army this week said troops have killed nearly 70 people as they hunt the attackers, although activists say the number could be much higher.
Violence escalated over the weekend, with state media reporting troops had killed more than 30 people in two days of fighting after the army responded to ambushes by bringing in helicopter gunships. The UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee lee, criticised the Government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for their handling of the crisis and called for ‘urgent action.’