The World Food Programme will provide food support to the five lakh Rohingyas, who have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, until they are repatriated, Relief and Disaster Management Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya yesterday said.

A few thousand Rohingya refugees entered Bangladesh yesterday slipping through the Rezu Aamtali border in Naikkhangchhari of Bandarban.

Several thousand Rohingyas from Myanmar, mostly women, children and elderly people, are waiting in no man's land along the Naikhyangchhari border to enter Bangladesh territory.

Expressing deep concern at reports of the killing of civilians in security operations in Rakhine State, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has reiterated Myanmar's responsibility to provide security and assistance to those in need.

The beautiful sunny August morning in the beach town meant very little to the hundreds of starving men, women and children in worn-out clothes near the borders. They have fled their homes in Myanmar as security forces set their homes on fire, drive them away or simply shoot at them. Crossing the border to Bangladesh, they now want to find food and shelter.

The very fact that Myanmar has termed the recent militant attack on its security forces as being the work of “extremist Bengali insurgents” underlines the very crux of the problem.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) members send back 146 Rohingyas who entered the country in the wake of fresh tensions between the insurgents and Myanmar security forces since last night.

Human rights body Fortify Rights has demanded Malaysia to investigate deaths in its immigration detention centres without delay and re-open an investigation into the human trafficking of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladeshis in recent years.