Bangladesh officials said on Tuesday a huge fire burned and gunshots were heard in a village across the border in Myanmar’s conflict-scarred Rakhine state, where authorities want to return Rohingya refugees. A “big fire” was seen raging late Monday in an abandoned village from Tombru, a frontier post in Cox’s Bazar, a senior Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The fire occurred the evening before Bangladesh was due to start repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to Rakhine state under an agreement with Myanmar. Another BGB official told AFP he heard several gunshots before flames were seen leaping from the village. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya have escaped Rakhine state over the border into Bangladesh since August in the wake of a military-led campaign in Rakhine state against the ethnic minority.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 23, 2018 13:30 UTC