Bangladesh, Myanmar reportedly agree to draw up plan for refugee repatriation
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Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to set up a "working group" to plan the repatriation of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape an army crackdown, the Bangladeshi foreign minister said.
The United Nations has called the exodus of 507,000 Rohingya since late August the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency, and says Buddhist-majority Myanmar is engaging in ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya Muslim minority.
Myanmar denies that. It says its forces are battling Rohingya "terrorists" who triggered the latest wave of violence with coordinated attacks on the security forces on Aug. 25. Myanmar says more than 500 people have been killed since, most of them insurgents, whom it has accused of attacking civilians and setting most of the fires that have reduced to ashes more than half of more than 400 Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine State.
