At least 150 Rohingya Muslim minority civilians have been killed this week in artillery and drone attacks in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, with survivors suspecting the attacks were carried out by a major force involved in the resistance to military rule.
The Arakan Army, the military wing of the state’s Rakhine ethnic group, on Monday denied responsibility for attacking Rohingyas trying to cross the Naf river into Bangladesh to escape fierce fighting in the town of Maungdaw.
A statement released on Friday by international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said that over the past week, they have treated a growing number of Rohingya people with violence-related injuries who managed to cross the border into Bangladesh.
The statement said some patients reported “witnessing bombings as people tried to find boats to cross the river to escape the violence in Bangladesh. Others reported seeing hundreds of bodies along the river.”
Two self-declared survivors contacted by The Associated Press blamed the Arakan Army, as did Rohingya activists and Myanmar’s military government. If confirmed, the attack would be one of the deadliest attacks involving civilians in the country’s civil war.
Gruesome videos circulating on social media showed the bodies of dozens of adults and children strewn on a road near the river.
Neither the video nor the details of the attack could be easily confirmed because of tight travel restrictions and ongoing fighting in the region.
Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces have been attempting to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.
However, the fighting in Rakhine has raised fears of a resurgence of organised violence against the Rohingya minority.
In 2017, at least 740,000 members of their community were sent to Bangladesh for safety as part of a military counter-insurgency operation. Nearly all of them are still living in overcrowded refugee camps, unable to return home because of continued instability.
Many Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, but face widespread prejudice and are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights in the Buddhist-majority country.
The Arakan Army, which is seeking autonomy from Myanmar’s central government, launched its offensive in Rakhine in November and has gained control of nine of the 17 townships, as well as one in neighbouring Chin state. It has been trying to capture the border town of Maungdaw since June.
It has been accused of human rights violations before, most notably in its takeover of the town of Buthidaung in mid-May. It is accused of forcing its nearly 200,000 residents, mostly Rohingya, to leave and then setting most of the buildings there on fire. The Arakan Army has denied such allegations, though witnesses have described the group’s actions to the AP and other media.
Allegations of abuses by the Arakan Army are controversial, as the group’s armed forces have played a key role in securing battlefield victories for the resistance movement against military rule.
There is much credible evidence of atrocities committed by military government forces, but little information is available about abuses committed by resistance groups.
A 17-year-old Rohingya from Maungdaw who survived the artillery and drone attacks said that after 6 p.m. on Monday, he saw four drones flying from the southern part of Maungdaw toward the riverbank, where about 1,000 Rohingya, including himself, were waiting for boats to enter Bangladesh.
Speaking to the AP by phone Friday from Bangladesh, on condition of anonymity to protect his relatives who remain in Maungdaw, the man said he and others jumped into the water after a drone dropped three bombs near where he and 12 members of his family were standing.
He said that after the drone attack, about 20 artillery shells also fell on the crowd and he estimated that about 150 people, including children and women, were killed and many others were injured.
Finding no boats to enter Bangladesh that night, he and his family returned to their village in Myanmar and walked back to the riverbank to try again at 5pm on Tuesday. But fighting broke out at the spot between the military government’s soldiers – who were in civilian clothes – and the Arakan Army soldiers who were pursuing them.
He said the troops withdrew from the riverbank after an hour of fighting, but Arakan Army soldiers shot at close range the Rohingya civilians remaining there. He saw at least 20 Rohingya killed, and believes many others caught in the crossfire also died.
He and only four members of his family managed to reach Bangladesh, while eight others went missing after Tuesday’s violence.
A 22-year-old Rohingya man who entered Bangladesh by boat just two hours after Monday’s attack told the AP that he saw about 50-60 bodies before boarding the boat, and many injured people, including children, seeking water and help or searching for missing people in the darkness.
A man from Maung Ni village, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said he and 11 of his family members, along with 30 others, were taken to Bangladesh in a small boat around 9pm on Monday. He said they managed to escape on Friday and reached a refugee camp in Bangladesh.
Both men said they believed the Arakan Army was responsible for the attacks, which came from the direction of the group’s camp south of Maungdaw and resembled drone strikes the group has been carrying out daily on the town, which is still held by military government troops. The Arakan Army is also known for its hostility toward the Rohingya community.
A statement released Friday by Doctors Without Borders supported the dates, locations and types of wounds described in the statements of both survivors.
It said its teams in Bangladesh treated 39 people for violence-related injuries from Sunday to Wednesday.
“More than 40 percent were women and children, and many were injured by mortar shells and gunfire,” it said, adding that the number peaked on Tuesday, when 21 injured people were treated.
Through Myanmar’s state-controlled press, the military also blamed the Arakan Army for attacking Rohingya civilians, a crime it was also accused of committing on a large scale in 2017.
A report published in the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Wednesday claimed that Arakan Army soldiers raped and killed Rohingya women and girls.
The Arakan Army denied carrying out Monday’s attack in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday. The group said it was not responsible for the deaths because they did not occur in an area it controlled. The statement also offered condolences.
It claimed that soldiers of the military government and local Muslims who were fighting alongside them were preventing civilians from reaching safer places.
The situation is particularly complex as the military government is forcibly recruiting Rohingya people into its army, while there are widespread reports that several armed Rohingya groups are abducting Rohingya people from refugee camps in Bangladesh and handing them over to serve in the military.