The United Nations’ refugee agency Friday significantly revised upward its estimate of how many Rohingya people had fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh over the past two weeks, to 270,000 from just 125,000 earlier this week.

Renewed violence has engulfed Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where tensions between the mostly-Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority and the country’s Myanmar and largely Buddhist majority have simmered and flared for decades.

Some 300,000 to 500,000 Rohingya already lived in refugee camps in Bangladesh before this summer. An estimated 1.1 million remained in Myanmar. Since Aug. 25, nearly a quarter of that remaining population has reportedly fled.

Human rights groups and journalists have reported a statewide scorched-earth campaign by Myanmar security forces to kill or otherwise expel Rohingya from the country.

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on Myanmar – also known as Byrma – said Friday that more than 1,000 mostly Rohingya people may have been killed over the past two weeks.


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