Police on Monday said seven Rohingya men suspected of being bandits have been killed in a gunfight with police near a refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh.
Battalion officer Mirza Shahed Mahtab said the gunfight occured when members of a special police unit, the Rapid Action Battalion, raided a hillside den of a suspected gang in the Teknaf sub-district of Cox’s Bazar.
The crime scene is about 350km south-east of the capital Dhaka.
According to the officer, the gunfight allegedly began with the suspected bandits firing their guns as the policemen approached their hideout.
The officer said this prompted the battalion members to retaliate with bullets, leaving seven people dead on the scene.
Another battalion officer, Rabiul Islam said the gunfight lasted for nearly an hour, and the bodies of the suspects were recovered later.
Islam said the officers fired their guns in self-defence, adding that three guns and many bullets were found at the scene.
Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims in refugee camps in the south-eastern district of Cox’s Bazar district after they fled persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.
Of them, nearly 750,000 crossed the border after Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown against the ethnic minority group in August 2017.
Police say many of the refugees have been involved in cross-border drug smuggling, robbery and other petty crimes in and around the camps.
According to local rights group Ain o Shalish Kendra, at least 49 Rohingya Muslims were killed in the so-called gunfights with law enforcement agencies in 2019.
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