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At Least 23 Rohingya Refugees Die as Boat Capsizes

HeadlineOct 10, 2017

In Bangladesh, at least 23 people are dead, and dozens more are missing, after a boat overloaded with desperate Rohingya refugees capsized off the coast near the country’s border with Burma. The migrants were attempting to join more than half a million Rohingya refugees who have fled an ethnic cleansing campaign backed by Burma’s military. This is Sayed Hossain, one of the survivors.

Sayed Hossain: “We were seven—my three kids, my wife, my father-in-law, my elderly mother and me. Among them, I alone survived. We all faced so much difficulty searching for food and surviving. They killed people and burnt down the villages and houses. We came here to save our lives.”

The latest deaths came as drone footage released by the Disasters Emergency Committee showed the scale of the Rohingya refugee crisis. The video shows a massive, sprawling camp of makeshift tents and shacks in Bangladesh stretching to the horizon.

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