Arakan News Agency
Arakan News Agency reported that only five villages remain among the hundreds of villages where Rohingya Muslims lived in northern Arakan after the wave of escape that began last August due to the ongoing military campaign by the Myanmar army and Buddhist extremists.
The villages are located in Rathidaung city, and are still inhabited by Muslims, but they are besieged and those who are inside are not allowed to go out to work or to get a livelihood are denied access to food supplies and medicines.
Dozens of villages in the area have been abandoned after a large-scale sweep by the Myanmar army against Rohingya since August 25, which involved burning villages and systematically killing Rohingya Muslim minority.
Rohingya observers said that more than 600,000 people fled to Bangladesh, representing 75 percent of the population of the cities of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, effectively leaving the majority of Rohingya from Arakan to Bangladesh or other countries in previous crises.
