Bangladesh to build new settlements for Rohingya Muslims

Bangladesh, which is facing an unprecedented influx of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, plans to build new settlements to house about 400,000 refugees that entered the country over the past three weeks.

The new settlements will be built within the next 10 days on 2,000 acres in the Cox's Bazar district near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar, officials have said.

The authorities plan to construct 14,000 shelters, each with the capacity to hold six families, with the help of international aid organisations and the Bangladesh military.

The United Nations described the actions against the Rohingya as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

Earlier on Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the "military and security forces in Myanmar to immediately cease the killings, harassment, and rape of the Rohingya people, and the burning of their homes".

Camps in Bangladesh were already overflowing with at least 400,000 Rohingya before the current exodus was provoked by Rohingya militants' attacking Myanmar police posts and an army base on Aug. 25.

The Myanmar government "and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, should condemn unequivocally all incitement to racial or religious hatred and combat social discrimination and hostilities against the Rohingya minority," said the resolution.

UNICEF said on Thursday that about 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar since Aug. 25, some 60 percent of them children.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday reiterated his call for Muslims from Myanmar's Rakhine state to be granted nationality or at least a legal status that would allow them to lead a normal life.

"I call on the Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence, uphold the rule of law, and recognize the right of return of all those who had to leave the country," the Secretary-General said in his first press conference since the opening of the 72nd session of the General Assembly.