AT LEAST 6,000 ROHINGYA STRANDED ON BANGLADESH BORDER: OFFICIAL

“We’ve been ordered not to allow Rohingya to enter Bangladesh,” said one border guard, who asked to remain anonymous as he was not permitted to speak to media.

“But how can I deny shelter to this newborn who is dying from cold?”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on Bangladesh to step up assistance to civilians escaping the violence, noting “many of those fleeing are women and children, some of whom are wounded”.

But there are already 400,000 Rohingya living in squalid camps in Bangladesh and the government has instructed its border guards to prevent another influx at all costs.

Bangladesh on Monday proposed joint military operations with Myanmar against Rohingya  fighting in Rakhine state, hoping to stem the flow of refugees.

Soldiers had detained and returned nearly 500 Rohingya trying to cross the border since Monday, Shariful Islam Jamaddar, a deputy commander of BGB, told AFP.

Mohammad Ismail had taken shelter from the rains under a plastic sheet erected by border guards just inside Bangladeshi territory, but the shelter has since been torn down.

“The border guards let us take shelter here, but I don’t know now what I will do with my son,” he told AFP, gesturing to the shivering boy.

Army convoys have been driving Rohingya who have managed to cross into Bangladesh back across the border several times a day, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Amid the turbulence and monsoon downpours, an 11-year-old Rohingya girl named Marium was separated from her parents.

“I went to the toilet when the (border) guards drove away my parents. Where shall I find them now?” the young girl told AFP in tears.