Children, teenagers among wounded Rohingya in crammed Bangladesh hospital
Mohammed Idrees, a 10-year-old Rohingya boy, does not remember how he landed at the hospital in Bangladesh with a part of his right ear blown off.
But he says he won’t return to his home country, neighboring Myanmar, until there is peace.
Idrees is one of around 60 badly injured Rohingya Muslims admitted to the hospital in Chittagong since violence flared in Rakhine state in the northwest of Myanmar in late August.
Rohingya insurgents attacked several police posts and an army base on Aug 25, leading to a military crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of at least 400 people and sent 146,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.
Apart from creating a humanitarian crisis, the unrest has also brought waves of international criticism of Myanmar’s leader, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, for not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution. The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country.
Almost all the Rohingya being treated at the Chittagong Medical College Hospital, the largest in southeast Bangladesh, have been injured by gunshots or bomb blasts, according to a hospital document given to Reuters. Around a third of the total injured are teenagers or younger, including a six-year-old boy.
The Myanmar military has repeatedly said that it has been targeting only insurgents in the crackdown.
Ajoy Kumar Dey, who is in charge of the hospital, said he had not seen similar wounds during previous influxes of Rohingya from Myanmar. He said the large number of young men and children, like Idrees, underlined the gravity of the situation in Rakhine.
“I don’t remember what happened to me, but I want to go see my mother,” Idrees said, lying on his bed in a soiled white shirt and a checked longyi, a Myanmar-style sarong. His head was bandaged and he was clutching the hand of his father, sitting by his side. “It hurts a lot.”
He cried as his father, Mohammed Rasheed, described how Myanmar security forces sprayed bullets into their village, Kyauk Chaung, on the morning of Aug. 25.
One bullet took off a chunk of Idrees’ ear as his family crouched behind a canal near their house. Six fellow villagers from Kyauk Chaung died in the hour-long shooting, said Rasheed.
A bleeding Idrees was carried on a bamboo stretcher over some hills near the border to reach Bangladesh the same night. His mother, three sisters and a brother arrived on Sunday.
“We are lucky all of us are alive,” said Rasheed.
Across the ward, a Rohingya man with bullet wounds in one shoulder, the back of a thigh and a shin, writhed in agony. A plastic nasal pipe was helping him breath.
News.Az
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