NEW YORK — The number of refugees who have fled Myanmar and entered Bangladesh since violence broke out in Rakhine state in late August has topped half a million, according to U.N. figures made public on Thursday.
The Muslim Rohingya, a marginalized and stateless people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, have been fleeing to Bangladesh amid reports of atrocities committed by the army.
“This is the largest mass refugee movement in the region in decades and the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is believed to be well over 700,000 people,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York on Thursday, quoting figures from the U.N.’s office for humanitarian affairs.
An estimated 501,800 Rohingya have crossed into the Bangladeshi border region of Cox’s Bazar since Aug. 25, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“The speed and scale of the influx has resulted in a critical humanitarian emergency,” said the IOM, which has been coordinating U.N. agencies and other groups working in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Some 217,000 of the newly arrived refugees are living in under-construction camps while 192,000 are in makeshift camps, the U.N.-affiliated organization said in a report by the Inter Sector Coordination Group.
Local residents have been hosting 92,000 Rohingya, the situation report said.
At least 14 people, including nine children, drowned when a boat headed for Bangladesh capsized in the Bay of Bengal on Thursday, Bangladeshi police said.
The accident is a “grim reminder of the extraordinary risks that desperate Rohingya are taking in order to escape the violence engulfing their homeland,” UNICEF’s Bangladesh representative Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
More than a quarter of a million children are among those who have taken refuge in southern Bangladesh in recent weeks, according to the U.N. children’s fund.
The U.N. Security Council was due to hold its first open session on the Rohingya refugee crisis Thursday, with a briefing from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Guterres has spoken out against what he is calling “ethnic cleansing” in the region and sent a letter to the council urging them to take action on the matter.
Diplomats and senior U.N. staff based in Myanmar were due to visit northern Rakhine state, the center of the conflict, on Thursday, but their flight was canceled due to poor weather conditions, Myanmar’s Information Ministry said in a statement.
The trip has been rescheduled for Monday.
The U.N.’s humanitarian operations in the region have been suspended since the violence broke out, and the trip was hoped to be a “first step” to regaining access to distribute aid, Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday as he announced the visit.
The refugees have accused the military and local Rakhine Buddhists of mass killings, rape and arson during a crackdown on Rohingya insurgents, who attacked police posts on Aug. 25. The army says the insurgents burned homes and killed dozens of Hindus.
