UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The number of Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh hit 582,000 people over the weekend as a senior UN official toured by air "dozens of burned and destroyed villages" they had fled from in Myanmar.
Chief UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that Jeffrey Feltman, undersecretary-general for political affairs, also met with senior Myanmar officials and visited several communities affected by recent violence and camps outside Sittwe for internally displaced persons (IDPs) set up in 2012.
Myanmar authorities had severely restricted access, including by humanitarian workers, to the besieged region in the northwest populated by the Muslim Rohingyas, until recently.
"He witnessed how, in addition to the documented endemic discrimination against the Rohingya population, socio-economic challenges adversely affect all communities," said Dujarric, who explained the jump from 525,000 to 582,000 over the weekend was caused in part by "strengthened assessments" by authorities of people coming over the border.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it is "concerned about the thousands of refugees stranded in Bangladesh near its border with Myanmar."
"Since Sunday evening up to 15,000 refugees entered Bangladesh," Dujarric said. "Many of them said they had initially chosen to stay in their homes in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State despite threats to leave or be killed and finally fled when their villages were set on fire."
"Many of the refugees are still waiting for permission to move away from the border," he said. "The agency is advocating with Bangladesh authorities to urgently admit these people."
In the past, the United Nations has thanked Bangladesh for hosting the refugees.
The World Health Organization said that in the first phase of its oral cholera vaccine campaign with the government and UNICEF (the UN Children's Agency) in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, 680,000 people over the age of 1 have been covered, the spokesman said.
Authorities were concerned about the spread of diseases because of the crush of people concentrated in Bangladeshi refugee camps.
In his meetings with top Myanmar officials, Feltman, the UN's political affairs chief, noted the government's endorsement of the recommendations of the final report of the international Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and urged their comprehensive implementation, the spokesman said.
Feltman urged the Myanmar government "to support the full implementation of the Advisory Commission's recommendations and credible investigations into allegations of human rights abuses by security officials in Rakhine," Dujarric said. "He underscored the importance of accountability and non-discriminatory rule of law and public safety as part of the comprehensive approach needed to address the fears and distrust among communities in Rakhine."
On Aug. 25, a Rohingya militia allegedly attacked three police posts in Rakhine and vigilantes and the government retaliated with attacks on Rohingyas and their villages, causing hundreds of thousands to flee their villages into neighboring Bangladesh.
