Dozens of Rohingya, including children, were killed in drone strikes as they fled Myanmar, witnesses said.

By Shoon Naing, Poppy McPherson and Devjyot Ghoshal

BANGKOK (Reuters) – A drone attack on Rohingya fleeing Myanmar has killed scores of people, including families with children, multiple witnesses said, describing survivors wading through piles of bodies to identify dead and wounded relatives.

Four witnesses, activists and the country's ambassador described Monday's drone attack that hit families waiting to cross the border into neighboring Bangladesh.

A heavily pregnant woman and her two-year-old daughter were among the victims of the attack, the deadliest in Rakhine state in recent weeks of fighting between the army and rebels.

Three witnesses told Reuters on Friday that the Arakan Army was responsible, allegations the group denied. Myanmar's army and soldiers are fighting each other. Reuters could not confirm or independently determine how many people were killed in the attack.

Videos posted on social media show dozens of bodies covered in mud, their suitcases and backpacks scattered around them. The three survivors said there were more than 200 dead and a witness to the incident said he saw at least 70 bodies.

Reuters confirmed the location of the videos just outside Myanmar's coastal city of Maungdaw. Reuters could not independently confirm the date the videos were recorded.

One of the witnesses, Mohammed Eleyas, 35, said his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter were injured in the incident and later died. He was standing with them on the beach when drones began attacking the crowds, Elyas told Reuters from a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

“I heard the deafening sound of multiple gunshots.” Elyas said that he was lying on the ground to protect himself and when he got up he saw that his wife and daughter were seriously injured and many of his other relatives had died.

The second witness, Shamsuddin, 28, said he survived with his wife and newborn son. Speaking from a refugee camp in Bangladesh, he said that after the attack, many were lying dead and “some people were screaming from the pain of their injuries”.

Boats carrying fleeing Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority facing extreme persecution in Myanmar, also sank in the Naf River that separates the two countries on Monday, killing dozens, according to two witnesses and Bangladeshi media.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said in a statement that the aid organization has treated 39 people who have crossed from Myanmar into Bangladesh since Saturday for violence-related injuries, including shell injuries and gunshot wounds. Patients described seeing people being bombed while trying to find boats to cross the river, the statement said.

A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said that the organization “is aware of the deaths of refugees when two boats capsized in the Bay of Bengal” and had heard reports of deaths in Maungdaw but could not confirm this. numbers or shapes.

FIGHTING IN THE DISTRICT

The Rohingya have long been persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. More than 730,000 of them fled the country in 2017 after the operation against the UN forces which it said was carried out with the intention of genocide.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military took power from a democratically elected government in 2021, and many protests have turned into armed struggle.

Rohingya have left Rakhine for weeks as the Arakan Army, one of the many armed groups fighting, has made major gains in the north, home to a large Muslim population.

Reuters previously reported that the army had burned down the largest Rohingya town in May, leaving Maungdaw, which has been besieged by insurgents, as the last major Rohingya stronghold outside the displacement camps in the south. The group denied the allegations.

Activist groups condemned this week's attack. A Western embassy official said he had confirmed the reports.

“These reports of hundreds of Rohingya being killed on the Bangladesh/Myanmar border are, I'm sorry to say, accurate,” Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations and former special envoy to Myanmar, wrote in X on Wednesday.

Myanmar's junta blamed the Arakan Army in a tweet on its Telegram channel.

The military denied the charge. “According to our investigation, members of the terrorist family tried to go to Bangladesh from Maungdaw and the officials threw a bomb because they left without permission,” Arakan Army spokesperson Khine Thu Kha told Reuters, referring to Muslims who have joined Rohingya armed groups. the Arakan army.

TRYING TO GET TO SAFETY

Reuters was able to confirm the location of the videos seen on social media from the location and the position of the mountain and the coast, along with a file and a satellite image of the area.

A fence posted in one of the videos also resembles a local file photo. The location of the videos is similar to the location described by Shamsuddin.

Elyas described how his wife and daughter died after the attack, and his desperate efforts to find a boat to take them to Bangladesh.

Before his wife died, “We apologized to each other for any wrong we may have done in our lives,” he said.

At midnight he finally found a small boat and was able to cross the border.