March 2 (UPI) — Bangladesh told Myanmar to remove troops stationed on their shared borders near where thousands of Rohingya refugees have taken shelter.
Members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police fired two shots in the air on Thursday after urging the approximately 7,000 Rohingya living in the area in the border between the two countries, known as “no man’s land,” to leave.
“We also heard a hullabaloo in the Rohingya camp on the zero line at the time. No one was injured,” Border Guard Bangladesh Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Manjurul Hasan said.
Beginning Thursday up to 200 Myanmar soldiers appeared near the makeshift border camp and border guards said machine guns and mortars also were seen in the area.
Bangladesh’s foreign ministry summoned the Myanmar ambassador to Dhaka and asked for an immediate withdrawal of the Myanmar security forces and military assets along the border.
Rohingya representative Mohammad Arif said Myanmar soldiers aimed their weapons at the Rohingyas and asked them to leave the area and also tried to enter the camp by crossing a barbed-wire fence.
About 700,000 Rohingya fled the burning of their homes in Myanmar last year amid what the Myanmar government said was a military crackdown on militant groups.
Later reports mentioned widespread human rights violations, killings and burning of civilian villages in Myanmar and the United Nations described Myanmar’s actions as “ethnic cleansing.”
