World

YANGON — Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi will address the crisis engulfing Rakhine state next week, in her first speech since scores were killed in violence that has sent nearly 380,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh and sullied her reputation as a defender of the oppressed.

A crackdown by Myanmar’s army, launched in response to attacks by Rohingya militants on August 25, has pushed vast numbers of refugees from the stateless Muslim minority across the border.

The violence has incubated a humanitarian crisis on both sides of the border and put intense global pressure on Suu Kyi to condemn the army campaign, which the UN has described as having all the hallmarks of “ethnic cleansing”.

At a press conference late Wednesday government spokesman Zaw Htay said Suu Kyi would “speak for national reconciliation and peace” in a televised address on September 19.

He said the Nobel laureate, who has been pilloried by rights groups for failing to speak up for the Rohingya minority, would skip the United Nations General Assembly next week to tackle the crisis unfurling at home.

She was needed in Myanmar to “manage humanitarian assistance” and “security concerns” caused by the violence. Competing rumours have intensified anti-Muslim rhetoric across the Buddhist-majority country.

Suu Kyi has been condemned for a lack of moral leadership and compassion in the face of a crisis that has shocked the international community.

Her limited comments so far have referenced a “huge iceberg of misinformation” and played down alleged atrocities against the Rohingya. 

Bangladesh is struggling to provide relief for exhausted and hungry refugees — some 60 per cent of whom are children — while nearly 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have also been displaced inside Myanmar.

Nine thousand more Rohingya refugees poured into Bangladesh on Wednesday, the UN said, as authorities worked to build a new camp for tens of thousands of arrivals who have no shelter.

Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s first civilian leader in decades, has no control over the powerful military, which ran the country for 50 years. A free election was finally held in 2015.

There is also scant sympathy among Myanmar’s Buddhist majority for the Rohingya, who are branded “Bengalis” — shorthand for illegal immigrants.

But outside of her country Suu Kyi’s reputation as a defender of the oppressed is in ruins.

Rohingya refugees have told chilling accounts of soldiers firing on civilians and razing entire villages in the north of Rakhine state with the help of Buddhist mobs.

The army denies the allegations.

The UN Security Council was scheduled later Wednesday to discuss the refugee crisis in a closed-door meeting, with China expected to block any attempts to censure its Southeast Asian ally.

Ahead of the meeting twelve Nobel Laureates signed an open letter urging the Security Council to “intervene immediately by using all available means” to end the tragedy and “crimes against humanity” unfolding in Rakhine.

Fallen star 

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner garlanded for her dignified and defiant democracy activism under Myanmar’s former junta, was once the darling of the international community.

She made her debut before the UN assembly last September, winning warm applause for a speech delivered months after she became Myanmar’s first civilian leader.

In it she vowed to find a solution to long-running ethnic and religious hatred in Rakhine “that will lead to peace, stability and development for all communities within the state”.

In a sign of how far her star has fallen, the same rights groups that campaigned for her release from house arrest have blasted her for failing to speak up in defence of the Rohingya.

Sympathisers say her hands are tied by the army, which still runs parts of the government and has complete control over all security matters.

While the US and other Western powers — as well as the Muslim world — have criticised the military campaign, Beijing on Tuesday offered Myanmar support — saying the country was entitled to “safeguard” its stability.

Human Rights Watch’s Phil Robertson urged the Security Council to pass a “global arms embargo” on Myanmar’s military but said he expected China to to water down any moves.

The 1.1-million strong Rohingya have suffered years of discrimination in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship even though many have long-lasting roots in the country.

Bangladesh does not want the group either, though it is providing the refugees with temporary shelter.

Many Rohingya have died making the perilous journey across the border, with nearly 100 drowning in boat trips across the Naf river that divides the two countries.

Bangladeshi authorities want to establish a 2,000-acre camp close to Myanmar’s border to house around 250,000 Rohingya and are also planning to build facilities on a flood-prone island.

FLORIDA CITY/MIAMI — Residents returned on Tuesday to parts of the Florida Keys Archipelago that was hammered by Hurricane Irma’s high winds and storm surge, while the death toll rose in the second major hurricane to hit the United States this year.

Irma, which had rampaged through the Caribbean as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday, and would likely dissipate from Tuesday evening, the National Hurricane Centre said.

At its peak the storm prompted evacuation orders for 6.5 million people in Florida, the largest evacuation in modern US history.

Irma killed 43 people in the Caribbean and at least 11 in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

A local Florida official said there had been more deaths yet to be reported, particularly on the Florida Keys, where Irma arrived on Key Cudjoe as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of up to 215km per hour on Sunday.

Local authorities told around 90,000 residents of Miami Beach and people from some parts of the Keys they could go home, but warned it might not be prudent to remain there.

“This is going to be a frustrating event. It’s going to take some time to let people back into their homes particularly in the Florida Keys,” Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told a news conference.

Millions of people were still without power in Florida.

‘So many areas’ flooded

The city of Jacksonville, in Florida’s northeast, was recovering from heavy flooding.

“There are so many areas that you would never have thought would have flooded that have flooded,” Florida Governor Rick Scott told reporters after a helicopter tour of the area.

Irma devastated several Caribbean islands en route to Florida. It destroyed about one-third of the buildings on the Dutch-ruled portion of St Martin Island, the Dutch Red Cross said on Tuesday.

The storm was the second major hurricane to hit the United States in a little more than two weeks. Hurricane Harvey plowed into Houston late last month, killing about 60 and wreaking some $180 billion in damage, largely through flooding.

Monroe County Commissioner Heather Carruthers said on Monday that people had been killed in the Keys, which have nearly 80,000 permanent residents, but she did not have a count on how many. 

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was off Florida’s east coast and two amphibious assault ships were en route to help in the Keys.

Monroe County opened road access on Tuesday morning for residents and business owners from Key Largo, the main island at the upper end of the chain, as well as the towns of Tavernier and Islamorada farther to the south, fire officials said.

No timetable was given for reopening the remainder of the Keys, which are linked by a series of causeways and bridges down to Key West, a popular tourist spot on the southern tip of Florida.

Some deaths during cleanup

Several major airports in Florida that halted passenger operations due to Irma began limited service on Tuesday, including Miami International, one of the busiest US airports.

Utility companies reported some 6.9 million homes and businesses were without electricity in Florida and neighbouring states, and said it could take weeks to fully restore service.

Insured property losses in Florida from Irma were expected to run from $20 billion to $40 billion, catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide estimated.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told an investor conference in New York that the storm would ultimately boost the economy by sparking rebuilding.

“There clearly is going to be an impact on GDP in the short run, we will make it up in the long run,” Mnuchin said. “As we rebuild, that will help GDP. It’s too early to tell what the exact estimates will be, but I think it won’t have a bad impact on the economy.”

 Several of the deaths caused by Irma came as people started cleaning up and making repairs.

A 55-year-old man died on Monday in Tampa, Florida, while using a chainsaw in a tree during storm cleanup, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said.

A man died in Worth County, Georgia, on Monday while repairing the roof of a shed during sustained winds of 67kph with gusts up to 112kph, a National Weather Service report said.

A man was found dead in Winter Garden, Florida, after being electrocuted by a downed power line, local police said.

One man in South Carolina was killed by a falling tree limb and another died in a traffic accident, officials said.

The National Hurricane Centre was monitoring another hurricane, Jose, which was spinning in the Atlantic about 1,130km west of Florida. About Two-and-a-half months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season, which starts in June.

VIENNA — The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Monday Iran was abiding by the rules set out in a nuclear accord it signed with six world powers in 2015, after Washington suggested it was not adhering to the deal.

The State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran's compliance with the deal. The next deadline is October and US President Donald Trump has said he thinks by then the United States will declare Iran non-compliant.

Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iran had not broken any promises and was not receiving special treatment.

"The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the [deal] are being implemented," he said in the text of a speech to a quarterly meeting of the IAEA's 35-member board of governors. 

Most sanctions on Iran were lifted 18 months ago under the deal and, despite overstepping a limit on its stocks of one chemical, it has adhered to the key limitations imposed on it.

In April, Trump ordered a review of whether a suspension of sanctions on Iran related to the nuclear deal, negotiated under President Barack Obama, was in the US national security interest. He has called it “the worst deal ever negotiated”.

 The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, travelled to Vienna last month to speak with Amano about Iran and asked if the IAEA planned to inspect Iranian military sites, something she has called for.

Iran dismissed the US demand as “merely a dream”.

Amano declined to comment on Haley’s statements when asked by reporters.

Iran has been applying an Additional Protocol, which is in force in dozens of nations and gives the IAEA access to sites, including military locations, to clarify questions or inconsistencies that may arise.

“We will continue to implement the Additional Protocol in Iran... as we do in other countries,” Amano said, referring to so-called complementary access visits granted under the protocol, details of which Amano said were confidential.

“I cannot tell you how many complementary accesses we have had, but I can tell you ... that we have had access to locations more frequently than many other countries with extensive nuclear programmes.”

 He called verification measures in Iran “the most robust regime” currently in existence.

In addition, the IAEA can request access to Iranian sites including military ones if it has concerns about activities or materials there that would violate the agreement, but it must show Iran the basis for those concerns.

That means new and credible information pointing to such a violation is required first, officials from the agency and major powers say. There is no indication that Washington has presented such information.

MIAMI/KISSIMMEE, Florida — Downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm, Irma flooded several northern Florida cities with heavy rain and a high storm surge on Monday as it headed out of the state after cutting power to millions and ripping roofs off homes.

Irma, once ranked as one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic, hit a wide swath of Florida over the past day, first making landfall on the Florida Keys Archipelago and then coming ashore south of Naples before heading up the west coast.

Now a tropical storm with sustained winds of up to 110km per hour, Irma was located about 56km west of Gainesville and headed up the Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center said at 8am ET (1200 GMT).

The Cuban government reported on Monday that 10 people had been killed after Irma battered the island’s north coast with ferocious winds and 11 metre waves over the weekend. This raised the overall death toll from Irma’s powerful rampage through the Caribbean to 38.

Northeastern Florida cities including Jacksonville were facing flash flooding, with the city’s sheriff’s office pulling residents from waist-deep water.

“Stay inside. Go up. Not out,” Jacksonville’s website warned residents. “There is flooding throughout the city and more rain is expected.”

Heart-pounding night

After what she called a terrifying night bunkered in her house in St Petersburg, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, with her children and extended family, Julie Hally emerged with relief on Monday. The winds had toppled some large tree branches and part of a fence, but her house was undamaged. 

“My heart just pounded out of my chest the whole time,” said Hally, 37. “You hear stuff hitting your roof. It honestly sounds like somebody is just whistling at your window the whole night. It’s really scary.”

Governor Rick Scott said he would travel later on Monday to the Florida Keys. Irma first came ashore at Cudjoe Key as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of up to 215kph.

The state’s largest city, Miami, was spared the brunt of the storm but still saw heavy flooding. Utility crews were already on the streets there clearing downed trees and utility lines. All causeways leading to Miami Beach were closed by police.

As it travelled through the centre of the state early on Monday, Irma brought gusts of up to 100 to 160kph and torrential rain to areas around Orlando, one of the most popular areas for tourism in Florida because of its cluster of theme parks, the National Weather Service said.

A piece of a McDonald’s “golden arch” sign hung in a tree near the fast-food restaurant in the central Florida city of Kissimmee on Monday morning. Valerie Gilleece, 55, had ridden out the storm in the city because her wheelchair-bound husband insisted on it, she said.

“I’m just thanking God to be alive,” Gilleece said. “I wanted to go from the start but he’s stubborn as hell.”

 Over the weekend, Irma claimed its first US fatality — a man found dead in a pickup truck that had crashed into a tree in high winds in the town of Marathon, in the Florida Keys, local officials said.

During its passage through the Caribbean en route to Florida, Irma was ranked at the rare top end of the scale of hurricane intensity, a Category 5, for days. It carried maximum sustained winds of up to 295 kph when it crashed into the island of Barbuda on Wednesday.

Ahead of Irma’s arrival, some 6.5 million people in southern Florida, about a third of the state’s population, were ordered to evacuate their homes. Some 200,000 were housed in shelters during the storm, according to federal officials.

The storm did some $20 billion to $40 billion in damage to insured property as it tore through Florida, catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide estimated.

That estimate, lower than earlier forecasts of up to $50 billion in insured losses, drove insurance company shares higher on Monday. Florida-based insurers Federated National, HCI Group and Universal Insurance were all up more than 12 per cent. Meanwhile, Europe’s insurance index was the biggest sectoral gainer, up 2 per cent and set for its best day in more than four months.

High winds snapped power lines and left about 5.8 million Florida homes and businesses without power, state data showed.

Miami International Airport, one of the busiest in the country, halted passenger flights through at least Monday. According to the FlightAware.com tracking site, a total of 3,582 US flights were cancelled on Monday, mostly as a result of the storm.

Irma was forecast to cross the eastern Florida Panhandle and move into southern Georgia later in the day, dumping as much as 41cm of rain, government forecasters said.

Police in Miami-Dade County said they had made 29 arrests for looting and burglary.

MIAMI — Hurricane Irma slammed into the Florida Keys Sunday, lashing the tropical island chain with fearsome wind gusts as it churns towards the US state’s west coast where a mass exodus has turned cities into ghost towns.

Six million people — one third of the state’s population — have been ordered to evacuate the path of the monster hurricane, which was upgraded to a Category Four storm as it passed over the Keys packing maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometres per hour.

In homes, hotels and school gyms, a die-hard minority who defied orders to flee were hunkered down as Irma’s roaring winds ripped boats from their moorings, flattened palm trees and tore down power lines across the island chain popular for fishing and scuba diving.

“There’s absolutely no way anybody can be outside right now,” Maggy Howes, a first responder on Key Haven, said on CNN. “You would not be able to stand or walk.”

One of the most powerful hurricanes ever to slam storm-prone Florida, Irma is threatening dangerous storm surges up to 4.5 metres, enough to cover a house, as it collides with the state after sowing devastation through the Caribbean.

A shelter of last resort set up in the Middle Keys city of Marathon was reported to be without power or running water, and surrounded by surging waters.

“Everything is underwater, I mean everything,” Larry Kahn, an editor for local news website FlKeysNews.com, reported from inside.

The cities of Naples, Fort Myers and the densely populated peninsulas of Tampa Bay on Florida’s west coast are next in the crosshairs of the historic storm, churning north at 14 kilometres per hour and already lashing the mainland with dangerous winds.

“It’s going to be horrible,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said on NBC Sunday Morning. “Now we have to hunker down and watch out for each other.” 

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn was more blunt: “We are about to get punched in the face by this storm.”

Mother delivers baby alone 

Irma smacked the Keys 57 years to the day that Hurricane Donna hit the same area in 1960, destroying nearly 75 per cent of the island chain’s buildings.

On the mainland, emergency services in Miami were sheltering in place from furious winds a dispatcher talked a woman through delivering her own baby on Sunday morning, Assistant Fire Chief Eloy Garcia told the Miami Herald.

More than one million Florida homes and businesses were without power, according to utility company Florida Power and Light, which said it had “safely shut down” one of two nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power plant.

The National Weather Service urged Floridians to keep their shoes on, to take shelter in interior rooms — far from windows — and use helmets, mattresses, pillows or blankets for protection.

At least 27 people have been killed since Irma began its march through the Caribbean, smashing through a string of islands from tiny Barbuda on Wednesday, to the tropical paradises of St Barts and St Martin, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos.

Terrified Cubans who rode out Irma in coastal towns — after it made landfall on Friday on the Camaguey Archipelago as a maximum-strength Category Five storm — reported “deafening” winds, uprooted trees and power lines, and blown rooftops.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba but it caused “significant damage”, and enormous waves lashed the Malecon, Havana’s emblematic seafront, causing seawaters to penetrate deep into the capital, AFP journalists reported. 

Storm surge, tornado risk 

Irma is so wide that authorities were bracing for destructive storm surges on both coasts of Florida and the Keys as Irma follows a path north toward Georgia.

The NHC also warned of tornado risks through Sunday night, with the greatest threat lying in areas east of the storm’s path.

Strip malls, fast food restaurants and retail giants were closed for business on both of Florida’s coasts.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the military installation home to US Central Command, issued mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm’s passage early on Monday, while the Kennedy Space Centre on the east coast was also closed.

In Naples, the city’s chic coastal neighbourhoods stood deserted on Sunday morning, as torrential rain beat down on streets littered with leaves ripped from palm trees.

But Viviana Sierra, who sought refuge at a shelter outside the city together with her dog, parents and brother, was sanguine about the prospect of finding her home destroyed. 

“You can replace material things but your life is very important, so I think it’s better that we stay here,” she said.

JUCHITAN, Mexico — At least 60 people died when the most powerful earthquake to hit Mexico in over eight decades tore through buildings and forced mass evacuations in the poor southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, triggering alerts as far away as Southeast Asia.

The 8.1 magnitude quake off the southern coast late Thursday was stronger than a devastating 1985 temblor that flattened swathes of Mexico City and killed thousands.

This time damage to the city was limited as the quake was deeper and farther away, but it still sent thousands of people scurrying from their homes onto the streets when the violent rumbling began that also shook Guatemala and El Salvador.

"It almost knocked me over," said Gildardo Arenas Rios, a 64-year-old security guard in Mexico City's Juarez neighbourhood, who was making his rounds when buildings started to tremble.

The Oaxacan town of Juchitan on Mexico's narrowest point bore the brunt of the disaster, with sections of the town hall, a hotel, a church, a bar and other buildings reduced to rubble.

"The situation is Juchitan is critical; this is the most terrible moment in its history," the local mayor, Gloria Sanchez, said a few hours before President Enrique Pena Nieto flew to the battered town to oversee rescue efforts.

Facades of shattered buildings, fallen tiles and broken glass from shop fronts and banks littered the pavements of Juchitan while heavily armed soldiers patrolled and stood guard at areas cordoned off due to the extent of the damage.

Startled residents stepped through the rubble of about 100 wrecked buildings, including houses, a flattened Volkswagen dealership and Juchitan's shattered town hall. Scores paced the terrain or sat outside warily, mindful of the frequent aftershocks.

"Look at what it did to my house," said Maria Magdalena Lopez, in tears outside its battered walls. "It was horrifying, it fell down."

 Alma Rosa, sitting in vigil with a relative by the body of a loved one draped in a red shroud, said: "We went to buy a coffin, but there aren't any because there are so many bodies."

 All the deaths were in three neighbouring states clustered near the epicenter that lay about 70km off the coast.

In Oaxaca, 45 people died, many of them in Juchitan, while in Chiapas 12 and in Tabasco three people lost their lives, according to federal and state officials.

In Chiapas, home to many of Mexico's indigenous ethnic groups, thousands of people in coastal areas were evacuated as a precaution when the quake sparked tsunami warnings.

Waves rose as high as 0.7 metres in Mexico, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said, though that threat passed.

State oil company Pemex said it was checking its installations for damage and closed the Salina Cruz refinery in the same region as the epicenter as a precautionary measure. It began restarting the 330,000 barrel-per-day refinery on Friday afternoon.

Woken in the night

At least 250 people in Oaxaca were also injured, according to agriculture minister Jose Calzada.

Classes were suspended in much of central and southern Mexico on Friday to allow authorities to assess the impact. Dozens of schools were damaged, officials said.

People ran into the streets in Mexico City, one of the world's largest metropolises and home to more than 20 million, and alarms sounded after the quake struck just before midnight.

Scores stood outside in central neighborhoods, some wrapped in blankets against the cool night air. Children were crying.

Liliana Villa, 35, who was in her apartment when the quake struck, fled in her nightclothes.

"It felt horrible, and I thought, 'This [building] is going to fall'," she said. 

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake's epicenter was 87km southwest of the town of Pijijiapan at a depth of 69km.

John Bellini, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre in Golden, Colorado, said Thursday's quake was the strongest in Mexico since an 8.1 temblor struck the western state of Jalisco in 1932.

Across the Pacific, the national disaster agency of the Philippines put the country's eastern seaboard on alert for possible tsunamis, although no evacuations were ordered.

Outages, aftershocks

Rescue workers searched through the night for anyone trapped in collapsed buildings, but the toll appeared to be less severe than that seen in some far less powerful tremors.

Windows were shattered at Mexico City airport and power went out in several neighbourhoods of the capital, affecting more than 1 million people. The cornice of a hotel came down in the southern tourist city of Oaxaca, a witness said.

Mexio City is built on a spongy, drained lake bed that amplifies earthquakes along the volcanic country's multiple seismic fault lines, even when they occur hundreds of miles away.

The 1985 earthquake was just inland, about 370km from Mexico City. Thursday's quake was 756km from the city. 

Authorities reported dozens of aftershocks, and President Pena Nieto said the quake was felt by around 50 million of Mexico's roughly 120 million population.

Mexico is evaluating whether the quake will trigger a payout from a World Bank-backed catastrophe bond, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Friday. Meade said the bond's coverage could reach $150 million, depending on magnitude and location.

But he said Mexico has sufficient funds to pay for a cleanup whether the bond was triggered or not.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — More than a quarter of a million mostly Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since fresh violence erupted in Myanmar last October, the United Nations said Thursday, as more bodies washed up a day after boats sank attempting to cross the river that divides the two countries.

In the last two weeks alone 164,000 mostly Rohingya civilians have fled to Bangladesh, overwhelming refugee camps that were already bursting at the seams and triggering warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

Scores more have died trying to flee the fighting in Myanmar's Rakhine state, where witnesses say entire villages have been burned to the ground since Rohingya militants launched a series of coordinated attacks on August 25, prompting a military-led crackdown.

Police in Bangladesh say they have recovered the bodies of 17 people, many of them children, who drowned when at least three boats packed with Rohingya refugees sank at the mouth of the Naf River that runs along the border.

Bangladesh border guards say desperate Rohingya are attempting to cross the river using small fishing trawlers that are dangerously overcrowded.

At least five have capsized leaving more than 60 people dead, police and border guards say.

Rohingya refugee Tayeba Khatun said she and her family had waited four days for a place on a boat to take them to Bangladesh after fleeing her township in Rakhine. 

"People were squeezing into whatever space they could find on the rickety boats. I saw two of those boats sink," she told AFP.

"Most managed to swim ashore but the children were missing."

'Starving to death' 

Those flocking into Bangladesh have brought with them harrowing testimony of murder, rape and widespread arson by Myanmar's army.

Most have walked for days to reach Bangladesh and the United Nations says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter, food and water.

Existing camps which hosted around 400,000 refugees before the latest influx are now completely overwhelmed, leaving tens of thousands of new arrivals with nowhere to shelter from the monsoon rains. 

Mazor Mustafa, a Bangladeshi businessman handing out food and rehydration fluids, said the situation was getting worse as more people arrived. 

"It is not at all enough food," he told AFP of the ration kits being distributed.

"These people are hungry, starving to death together."

 The latest figures mean that nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims have fled since fighting first broke out last October.

Impoverished Bangladesh initially tried to block them from entering, but has now given up attempting to stem the tide.

On Wednesday its foreign ministry summoned the Myanmar ambassador to demand immediate measures to curb the violence.

The Rohingya are denied citizenship in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, which is under growing international pressure over its apartheid-like treatment of the stateless minority.

UN investigators have said a military crackdown that followed ambushes by Rohingya militants in October last year may amount to ethnic cleansing.

Bullet wounds 

The recent fighting is the fiercest in Rakhine, Myanmar's poorest state, in years.

Cattle rancher Mohammad Shaker, 27, crossed into Bangladesh on Thursday suffering a gunshot wound to his chest that he said was inflicted by Myanmar soldiers.

"I tried to flee with our stock near the river when the military started shooting at us," he told AFP, nursing his untreated wound.

"I fell on the ground and later my relatives found me. We hid in the hills for days, and this morning managed to come here."

 Scores of refugees have arrived in Bangladesh needing treatment for serious bullet wounds, while others have lost limbs after apparently setting off landmines along the border.

On Thursday, a mass funeral was held at a mosque near the border for five men whose relatives said they had been shot dead by the Myanmar military. The relatives carried their bodies over the border so they could be buried in Bangladesh.

Myanmar says some 27,000 mainly ethnic Buddhist Rakhine have also fled in the opposite direction since August 25, accusing Rohingya militants of targeting their communities.

Myanmar's government, led by Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected allegations of atrocities, accusing the international media, NGOs and the UN of fabrications.

It has placed the blame for the violence squarely on the militants, saying they are setting fire to their own homes.

Myanmar said Thursday that 6,600 Rohingya homes and 201 non-Muslim homes had been burned to the ground since August 25.

They added some 30 civilians had been killed — seven Rohingyas, seven Hindus and 16 Rakhine Buddhists — in the fighting.

Myanmar's army has previously said around 430 people had been killed in the fighting, including militants and soldiers.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — When his family of six crossed the monsoon-soaked Mayu mountains last week, Mohammed Ishmail tied his four-year-old daughter to his back with a longyi, or Myanmar sarong. His wife carried their two-year-old the same way.

"Some parts were so steep we had to pull ourselves up by tree roots," said Ishmail, a Rohingya Muslim, in an interview near the Kutapalong settlement for refugees in Bangladesh, shortly after arriving on Tuesday.

"At night, we just cut a clearing in the bush and slept there. We had two umbrellas for shelter."

 The trek through the dense bush of the mountains took two days, but the journey from his home in Khin Tha Ma village — which he says was on fire the last time he saw it — took 10. He says it felt like a month.

The number of refugees who have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state since militant attacks there on August 25 stands at nearly 150,000. 

They have come by land, river and sea. Many have died along the way. Others have found themselves detained by human traffickers, demanding payment for their rescue.

Their destination is the Cox's Bazar region of impoverished Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya already live in makeshift camps, reliant on overstretched aid agencies.

Once through the mountains, Ishmail's family came across villages in the northern part of the Maungdaw district — the epicentre of violence in the state since October — that had been abandoned. By his count, only about one in 20 houses had survived fires that have swept the area.

"Some people are still hiding in the forest on the Maungdaw side but in some villages there's no one," he said. "There was no one to ask directions."

 But then there was. As they reached a canal and were trying to find a way to cross it, he said, two young Myanmar soldiers spotted them and aimed their guns, he said.

"I put my hands up and shouted, 'We're going to Bangladesh'," he said. There was a tense silence before the soldiers lowered their weapons. 

"After that they showed us the best way to cross the canal," he added.

In one village, to escape the rain, Mohammed Ishmail entered a house still standing to find the bodies of five boys, who appeared to be teenagers, their necks hacked and heads nearly severed.

The death toll in the conflict is more than 400 and rising.

Myanmar says most of those killed have been insurgents, but accounts from new arrivals in Bangladesh suggest reprisals by Myanmar security forces and Buddhists against Rohingya civilians the government says are in cahoots with "extremist Bengali terrorists".

Myanmar rejects accusations that its security forces are targeting civilians saying they are fighting "terrorists".

Dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, have washed up on the Bangladesh side of a border river, many with bullet or knife wounds, according to Bangladesh border guards. Fishermen report seeing bodies floating in the river.

Reuters was shown one cadaver — what looked to be a teenage boy lying face up on the muddy river bank, a gaping wound on his face washed clean by the river.

In Maungdaw, thousands of people are on the move. A Rohingya aid worker, who was in touch with Reuters during his flight, recorded video of the journey on his mobile phone.

"It's like something I've never seen before, not even in any film," the refugee said after his arrival in Cox's Bazar.

The footage appears to show hundreds of people lining up to cross a river in Laung Don village. Some swim across, as two small ferries run back and forth.

At one river crossing, the aid worker said, fighters from the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (ARSA) prevented ferries from crossing for half a day, telling civilians to return to their homes. 

Campaign group Fortify Rights has documented how ARSA has prevented men and boys from leaving the area.

The refugee, who asked not to be identified so he could freely discuss his journey, said the fighters backed down when villagers pleaded with them.

In southern Maungdaw, the military's campaign has driven tens of thousands of people to the coast. Bangladeshi boatmen, in their hundreds, are going to pick them up.

SHAMLAPUR, Bangladesh/DHAKA — Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi came under more pressure on Tuesday from countries with Muslim populations to halt violence against Rohingya Muslims that has sent nearly 125,000 of them fleeing over the border to Bangladesh in just over 10 days.

Reuters reporters saw hundreds more exhausted Rohingya arriving on boats near the Bangladeshi border village of Shamlapur on Tuesday, suggesting the exodus was far from over.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said on Tuesday the country is ready to ease the burden of Bangladesh in dealing with the Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Myanmar, but the help is likely to be only humanitarian, not financial.

"We will continue to discuss what sort of support Indonesia could make to ease the burden of the Bangladesh government," Marsudi told a news conference after she met Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in Dhaka.

"This humanitarian crisis shall be ended. I want to repeat, this humanitarian crisis shall be ended," she told reporters in Dhaka, a day after meetings in the Myanmar capital.

On Wednesday, Indonesia's ambassador to Bangladesh will meet the foreign minister to discuss relief assistance, which she said will be more on the humanitarian side than monetary, she told Reuters on the sidelines of the brief press meeting.

The latest violence in Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state began on August 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counteroffensive have killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of villagers to Bangladesh.

The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's roughly 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing Suu Kyi, who has been accused by Western critics of not speaking out for the minority that has long complained of persecution.

Myanmar says its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against "terrorists" responsible for a string of attacks on police posts and the army since last October.

Myanmar officials blamed Rohingya militants for the burning of homes and civilian deaths but rights monitors and Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh say the Myanmar army is trying to force them out with a campaign of arson and killings.

"Indonesia is taking the lead, and ultimately there is a possibility of ASEAN countries joining in," H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told Reuters.

He was referring to the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations that includes both Myanmar and Indonesia.

"If we can keep the pressure on Myanmar from ASEAN, from India as well, that will be good... If the international conscience is awakened, that would put pressure on Myanmar."

 Malaysia, another ASEAN member, summoned Myanmar's ambassador to express displeasure over the violence and scolded Myanmar for making "little, if any" progress on the problem.

"Malaysia believes that the matter of sustained violence and discrimination against the Rohingyas should be elevated to a higher international forum," Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in a statement.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has said the violence against Rohingya Muslims constituted genocide, told Suu Kyi the violence was of deep concern to the Muslim world, and he was sending his foreign minister to Bangladesh.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a visit to Myanmar on Tuesday, during which he will meet top officials, including Suu Kyi.

Pakistan, home to a large Rohingya community, has expressed "deep anguish".

Full camp

The latest estimate of the numbers who have crossed into Bangladesh since August 25, based on calculations by UN workers, is 123,600.

That takes to about 210,000 the number of Rohingya who have sought refuge in Bangladesh since October, when Rohingya insurgents staged smaller attacks on security posts, triggering a major Myanmar army counteroffensive and sending about 87,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh.

Refugees arriving in Shamlapur, and residents of the village, said hundreds of boats had arrived on Monday and Tuesday with several thousand people.

Reuters reporters saw men, women, children and a few possessions, including chickens, disembark from one boat.

"The army set fire to houses," said Salim Ullah, 28, a farmer from Myanmar's village of Kyauk Pan Du, gripping a sack of belongings.

"We got on the boat at daybreak. I came with my mother, wife and two children. There were 40 people on the boat, including 25 women."

 The new arrivals — many sick or wounded — have strained the resources of aid agencies and communities already helping hundreds of thousands of refugees from previous spasms of violence in Myanmar. 

Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said one camp in Bangladesh, Kutupalong, had reached "full capacity" and resources at others were being stretched.

"We are doing what we can, but will need to seek more resources," Tan said.

Bangladesh is concerned about Myanmar army activity on the border and would lodge a complaint if Bangladeshi territory was violated, an interior ministry official said.

A Bangladesh border guard officer said two blasts were heard on Tuesday on the Myanmar side, after two on Monday fuelled speculation Myanmar forces had laid land mines.

One boy had his left leg blown off near a border crossing before being brought to Bangladesh for treatment, while another boy suffered minor injuries, the officer, Manzurul Hassan Khan, said, adding the blast could have been a mine explosion.

The Myanmar army has not commented on the blasts near the border but said in a statement on Tuesday Rohingya insurgents were planning bomb attacks in Myanmar cities including the capital, Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay to "attract more attention from the world".

BERLIN — Angela Merkel appeared to be powering ahead on Monday to a fourth term as chancellor of Germany, after her rival Martin Schulz failed to halt her advance in a crucial televised debate three weeks before elections.

Sunday's prime-time TV clash had been billed as Schulz's last chance to sway a decisive share of voters to his cause and halt a devastating popularity slide.

But polls following the 90-minute showdown, which was watched by 16.1 million people, gave Merkel the clear edge over Schulz, a former European Parliament chief.

"Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch. The candidate is an honourable man. But being honourable alone won't make one chancellor," wrote Sueddeutsche daily commentator Heribert Prantl.

With millions of voters still undecided, Schulz had been looking to the debate to erode the commanding 17 per cent age point lead of Merkel's CDU Party and their Bavarian CSU allies ahead of the September 24 polls.

Schulz, who had previously complained that Merkel was lulling voters to sleep with her refusal to engage in combative debate, went on the offensive quickly on the hot-button issue of migration.

He accused Merkel of failing to coordinate plans with EU neighbours when she decided to open Germany's borders in 2015 to allow in refugees, many from war-torn Syria and Iraq.

But Merkel was not rattled, countering that: "In the life of a chancellor, there are moments when you have to make a quick decision."

And as Schulz voiced his wish to end EU membership talks with Turkey amid escalating tensions with Ankara, Merkel stole the issue from under his feet as she said she did not "see them ever joining" the bloc.

Together with EU counterparts, she will examine if "we can end these membership talks", Merkel added.

Merkel's tough line comes after Ankara arrested two more German nationals for "political reasons", according to Berlin.

The plunge in relations began after Germany sharply criticised Ankara over the crackdown that followed last year's failed coup attempt there.

'Stiff and dowdy' 

But for the minor skirmishes, commentators lamented it was more of a "duet than a duel" in the spirit of the right-left "grand coalition" Merkel has led since 2013.

"That wasn't a TV debate, it was a torturous 90-minute grand coalition therapy discussion," said Dietmar Bartsch, a candidate from the far-left Die Linke.

"Nothing on climate, nothing on education, nothing on digitalisation," Greens Party leader Cem Ozdemir tweeted during the event. "When will they start talking about the future?" 

Opinion polls following the programme showed a clear victory for Merkel, with public broadcaster ARD saying 55 per cent found her more convincing while 35 per cent plumped for Schulz.

An ZDF survey was closer but still had Merkel ahead with 32 per cent, against 29 per cent who thought Schulz performed better. 

Merkel "appeared to be more competent than in any previous duel. She was not brilliant, but sure. Schulz, on the other hand, was so stiff and dowdy, like Merkel was in previous duels", wrote Prantl. 

Munich's Merkur daily also noted that "in an increasingly uncertain world which is led by testosterone-filled leaders, people don't know what Schulz wants. But they know what Merkel can do”.

Members of Merkel's party feted the results, with Julia Kloeckner tweeting: "Angela Merkel: Stateswoman. Schulz: election candidate”.

But Schulz's Social Democrats equally applauded the man who is known to be a fiery orator.

Manuela Schwesig, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state premier, said: "Martin Schulz has shown that he can be chancellor."

Sunday's so-called "television duel" between the election campaign's two leading candidates was the dramatic high point of Germany's sleepy electoral campaign season.

Having already fought three previous general elections, the famously cautious Merkel is no stranger to the TV format.

But this was the first time that she has prevailed, with surveys immediately after each of the previous three editions showing a popularity bounce for her opponents.