2 Rohingya refugee leaders killed in Bangladesh

Two Rohingya refugee leaders were killed in a crammed Bangladeshi refugee camp, causing panic among the persecuted people, a senior police official confirmed on Wednesday.

Abu Taleb (40), a community head at a camp in the Ukhia sub-district, and Syed Hossain (35), another community leader of the same camp in the border district of Cox's Bazar, were killed on Tuesday night, according to police sources.

Md. Kamran Hossain, additional superintendent of the Armed Police Battalion (APBN) in Ukhiya, told Anadolu Agency that the killing seems to be motivated by personal animosity. The killers had been monitoring the deceased's location for a long time, and "it appears to be a targeted homicide," he said, basing his assessment on preliminary information and assuring the killers would be brought to justice.

For internal management and discipline, Bangladeshi authorities select comparatively active and talented Rohingya members as community heads in different camps known as "Majhee."

According to media accounts, nearly 100 murder incidents have been reported in these camps.

Besides, around 50 Rohingya have been victimized in extrajudicial killings by Bangladeshi law enforcers, which local authorities have claimed were casualties in the crossfire with criminals.

Currently, Bangladesh is hosting more than 1.2 million stateless Rohingya in the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar, which is divided into 34 camps.

Most of these Rohingya fled a brutal military clampdown in the home country of Myanmar's Rakhine state in August 2017 that the rights bodies and the United Nations have marked as genocide.