Dhaka, Oct. 7, (dpa/GNA) – At least four Rohingya men were killed in a gunfight between two rival groups in a Bangladeshi refugee camp, a home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in neighbouring Myanmar, police said on Tuesday.
Officer Ahmed Sanjur Morshed said the rivals began fighting in the late evening at Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district, leaving four people dead and many others wounded.
Attempts to establish supremacy in the camp, located more than 300 kilometers south-east of the capital Dhaka, might have caused the groups equipped with firearms, machetes and other locally-made weapons to engage in battle, he said.
Additional police officers were deployed after the gunfight to maintain order, Morshed said, adding that an investigation has been launched.
Three of the bodies were found riddled with bullets while the fourth man died of stabbing, said Rafiqul Islam, the deputy chief of police in Cox’s Bazar district.
Earlier in the morning, police arrested nine suspected Rohingya bandits from a hill adjacent to the camp and seized firearms from their possession, he added.
Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims in 34 camps in Cox’s Bazar after they fled persecution in Myanmar.
Of them, nearly 750,000 crossed the border following the August 2017 military crackdown – which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” – on the minority group in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state.
Police say many of the refugees have been involved in cross-border drug smuggling, robbery and other petty crimes in and around the camps.
Two other Rohingya men were killed in a gunfight between the groups on Sunday.
GNA