Balukhali, Bangladesh
Gunmen killed seven people and wounded at least 20 Friday in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, police and a medic said, an attack that heightens tensions after the recent shooting of a prominent community leader.
The attackers shot and stabbed people attending an Islamic school in the camp, a regional police chief said.
Four people died instantly. Three others died at a hospital in one of the camps in the Balukhali refugee complex, part of a bigger network of squalid settlements housing 900,000 people.
Police did not say how many were wounded but a medic with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who requested anonymity said about 20 people were badly hurt.
“About 20 seriously injured people came to our hospital, many with no arms, no legs or no eyes. Their condition is very bad,” the doctor said.
Police official Kamran Hossain said “Rohingya miscreants” entered the Darul Ulum Nadwatul Ulama al Islamia madrassa before dawn and “randomly hacked and shot people inside”.
Security forces immediately sealed off the camp, which houses more than 27,000 people.
Camp residents shared images on social media of bodies on the floor of the madrassa. The images could not be independently verified.
“We arrested one attacker immediately after the incident,” local police chief Shihab Kaisar Khan told reporters.
The man was found with a gun, six rounds of ammunition and a knife, he added.—AFP
