Four Rohingya refugees were trampled to death by an elephant in a makeshift camp in the Cox’s Bazaar area of Bangladesh on Saturday morning.
A woman and three young children, who had fled violence in their home country of Myanmar, were killed when the animal stormed their temporary shelter in the Balukhali camp, where tens of thousands of refugees are living.
The deaths of the woman; two girls, 9 and 6; and a boy, 1; were confirmed by Md Abdul Khayer, the officer in charge of the Ukhiya police station in the area.
Six people, including the husband and a son of the dead woman, Taslima Siddique, were injured and admitted to a hospital. Ms. Siddique was the mother of one of the children killed, but authorities were not sure which child was hers.
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The deaths are the latest tragedy for members of the Muslim ethnic group, who were forced from their homes in Rakhine State in Myanmar a brutal crackdown by the country’s security forces that began in August. The United Nations says the crackdown has amounted to ethnic cleansing. Survivors have detailed harrowing accounts of violence in their villages.
More than a half-million Rohingya have left Rakhine for neighboring Bangladesh, but conditions in the sprawling makeshift camps there are bleak. Officials worry that disease and a lack of resources will further devastate an already suffering population. The area’s roaming wild elephant population has added to the risks.
“This was a place where elephants usually roam around,” Mr. Khayer said. “Maybe it was unknown to them,” he added, referring to the newly arrived refugees.
The Bangladesh branch of the International Office of Migration, the United Nations agency that has been monitoring the influx of Rohingya into the country, confirmed the trampling incident in a statement posted to its Twitter account. It noted that elephants had been spotted previously in the area, when the organization was surveying the site.
Many refugees fleeing Myanmar arrive in Teknaf, Bangladesh, the southernmost district of Cox’s Bazaar, and then move north to the Ukhiya district where the vast, teeming makeshift settlements of Kutupalong, Balukhali and other satellite sites are.
They arrive exhausted after days of travel by foot and a dangerous sea or river crossing by boat, and are malnourished, usually with nothing more than the clothes on their back.There have been previous elephant tramplings in the makeshift camps. On Sept. 18, at least two Rohingya refugees died after an elephant stormed the Kutupalong camp, which was built in the area of an elephant tramples
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