International

Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are close to running out of coronavirus vaccines, authorities said yesterday, and are hoping China and Russia will bolster South Asia’s efforts to tackle a devastating pandemic wave. Covid-19 cases and deaths have hit record levels across India and its neighbours in recent weeks and all are counting on vaccine campaigns to head off the next surge. But India’s move last month to ban vaccine exports because of growing domestic shortages has badly hit other countries, and the three South Asian nations have slowed their vaccination campaigns as they scour international markets for new stocks. Bangladesh has about 1mn doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Chinese Sinopharm jabs, and was expecting 100,000 Pfizer shots, but all will be gone in “days”, government health chief ABM Khorshed Alam said. The country of 168mn people has reported some 800,000 infections and 12,200 deaths. As in other South Asian nations, experts say the true toll is much higher. Bangladesh had a deal to buy 30mn Covishield doses from the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker. Only 7mn had been delivered when India halted exports last month. It has since contacted China and Russia to get their vaccines and Western countries who may have surplus AstraZeneca shots. One deal with China for an unspecified number of Sinopharm shots was approved on Wednesday, officials said. But China’s ambassador Li Jiming said Bangladesh should not expect commercial supplies before December. He told the bdnews24.com portal that “the queue is too long”. Nepal has an estimated 1.5mn people waiting for a second shot of Covishield, with supplies also held up by the Indian export ban. It is now getting through dwindling numbers of Sinopharm jabs given by China. Sri Lanka, with a population of 21mn, has about 115,000 vaccine doses left and has slowed its inoculations to 15,000 a day as it also negotiates with other countries, officials said. The new pandemic wave saw the daily death toll hit a record 38 on Thursday. India’s export ban froze Sri Lanka’s deal to buy 13.5mn Covishield doses from Serum International, authorities said. Sri Lanka is now going through 600,000 gifted Sinopharm doses and is hoping to receive 26mn shots from Russia and China. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said governments and pharmaceutical companies had to help struggling Asian nations where hospitals are overflowing with sufferers. “Tens of thousands of lives are being lost each week and vaccines must be available so that we can prevent further terrible tolls in the weeks and months ahead,” said Alexander Matheou, Asia Pacific head of the IFRC. Even India, one of the world’s major pharmaceutical and vaccine producers, is looking for foreign supplies. India has already started importing Sputnik V from Russia as its ambitious target of inoculating 300 million people by the end of July is slowed by shortages. About 150mn people have had a first dose and 40mn the second jab. But daily injections have fallen from 3.6mn a day in April to 1.4 million on Thursday. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is to visit the United States next week and media reports said he would meet executives from US vaccine makers.

At least 26 people were killed when a speedboat packed with passengers yesterday collided with a vessel transporting sand in the latest maritime disaster to hit Bangladesh. Police said the speedboat carrying about three dozen passengers from the town of Mawa rammed into the other vessel in the Padma river as it neared the main river station in the central rural town of Shibchar. “We have so far recovered 26 bodies including a woman. We have also rescued five injured people including three children,” police official Amir Hossain said. Hossain said the bow of the passenger boat was destroyed when the speedboat smashed into the side of the transport vessel, sinking in the river in minutes. “Police, the fire brigade and army rescue teams are on the spot, conducting search and rescue work,” he said. Witness Abdur Rahman said there was a loud noise when the boats collided and the vessels then overturned. “When we rushed to the spot we found the speedboat torn into two pieces. Hundreds of villagers immediately started conducting rescue work before they were joined by police and the fire brigade,” he said. Bangladesh is building the country’s largest road and railway bridge near the accident spot and police said officers were immediately at the scene. Construction work has slowed ferry transport on the river, prompting many to take the journey on less safe speedboats, which take only about 15 minutes to make the crossing in contrast to up to two hours on safer ferries. The government administrator of Shibchar district said up to five people were believed to be missing. He said the driver of the speedboat would be investigated as he appeared to have hit the transport vessel, which was moored at the time. “A probe has been ordered into the accident,” he said. Maritime accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers. Experts blame poor maintenance, lax safety standards at shipyards and overcrowding for many of the accidents. Vessels transporting sand sit low in the water and can be hard to see in choppy conditions, particularly when light is poor. In early April, more than 30 people died when a packed ferry with around 50 passengers hurrying home from the central city of Narayanganj ahead of an impending coronavirus lockdown collided with a larger cargo vessel. In June last year, a ferry sank in Dhaka after it was hit from behind by another ferry, killing at least 32 people. In February 2015, at least 78 people died when an overcrowded ship collided with a cargo boat.

At least 26 people were killed when a speedboat packed with passengers collided with a vessel transporting sand on Monday in the latest maritime disaster to hit Bangladesh. Police said the speedboat carrying about three dozen passengers from the town of Mawa rammed into the other vessel in the Padma river as it neared the main river station in the central rural town of Shibchar. "We have so far recovered 26 bodies including a woman. We have also rescued five injured people including three children," police official Amir Hossain told AFP. Hossain said the bow of the passenger boat was destroyed when the speedboat smashed into the side of the transport vessel, sinking in the river in minutes. "Police, the fire brigade and army rescue teams are on the spot, conducting search and rescue work," he said. Witness Abdur Rahman said there was a loud noise when the boats collided and the vessels then overturned. "When we rushed to the spot we found the speedboat torn into two pieces. Hundreds of villagers immediately started conducting rescue work before they were joined by police and the fire brigade," he said. Bangladesh is building the country's largest road and railway bridge near the accident spot and police said officers were immediately at the scene. Construction work has slowed ferry transport on the river, prompting many to take the journey on less safe speedboats, which take only about 15 minutes to make the crossing in contrast to up to two hours on safer ferries. The government administrator of Shibchar district said up to five people were believed to be missing. He said the driver of the speedboat would be investigated as he appeared to have hit the transport vessel, which was moored at the time. "A probe has been ordered into the accident," he said. Maritime accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers. Experts blame poor maintenance, lax safety standards at shipyards and overcrowding for many of the accidents. Vessels transporting sand sit low in the water and can be hard to see in choppy conditions, particularly when light is poor. In early April, more than 30 people died when a packed ferry with around 50 passengers hurrying home from the central city of Narayanganj ahead of an impending coronavirus lockdown collided with a larger cargo vessel. In June last year, a ferry sank in Dhaka after it was hit from behind by another ferry, killing at least 32 people. In February 2015, at least 78 people died when an overcrowded ship collided with a cargo boat.

The Bangladesh coast guard yesterday rescued 30 Rohingya refugees adrift in the Bay of Bengal for two days after they were attacked by pirates, an official said. About a million Rohingya refugees live in sprawling camps in south-east Bangladesh, having fled repression in Myanmar. Many pay often-unscrupulous traffickers to put them on dangerous sea journeys to southeast Asian countries — in this case Malaysia, home to a sizeable Rohingya diaspora. Coast Guard spokesman lieutenant commander Amirul Haque said the boat left from near the camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district on Friday, carrying 20 women, five men and five children. “On Sunday, the boat was attacked by pirates who took all valuables from the refugees and crippled the boat’s engine before leaving,” he told reporters. “They were drifting in the sea without much food as the boat was only meant to take them to a bigger trawler waiting in deep sea. “If we hadn’t rescued them in time, they would have faced serious consequences,” another coast guard spokesman said. Police said the refugees would be sent to Bhashan Char, a controversial island facility where Dhaka aims to relocate about 100,000 refugees from the congested camps. In 2017, some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh, leaving their Rakhine state homes to escape a brutal military clampdown by Myanmar security forces. They joined another 300,000 refugees already living in harrowing conditions. Since 2015, tens of thousands of Rohingya and poor Bangladeshis have boarded rickety boats to travel to southeast Asia in search of jobs and better lives. Hundreds have perished at sea, triggering a crackdown by countries including Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia.

At least five people were killed and dozens injured in Bangladesh yesterday after police opened fire on a crowd of workers protesting to demand unpaid wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant, officials and police said. Police opened fire after about 2,000 of the protesters began hurling bricks and stones at officers at the construction site of the coal-fired plant in the southeastern city of Chittagong, local police official Azizul Islam told Reuters. Four protesters died at the scene and another died in hospital, he said. “We’re trying to control the situation,” Islam said, adding that at least six police officers were among those injured. The workers attacked and set fire to several structures at the 1,320-megawatt power plant, located 265km southeast of the capital, Dhaka, he added. Local government official Saiduzzaman Chowdhury said the workers were protesting over unpaid wages and to press demands for a pay rise and reduced hours during the holy month of Ramadan, which started this week. Several of the injured workers had gunshot wounds and were taken to a hospital in Chittagong, he said, adding that the five people who were killed had all been shot. The $2.4bn power plant is a major source of foreign investment into Bangladesh, and one of a series of projects that Beijing is pushing to cultivate closer ties with Dhaka. In 2016, China’s Sepcoiii Electric Power Construction signed a deal with S Alam Group, a Bangladeshi conglomerate responsible for construction work at the site. During that year, four protesters opposed to its construction were killed when police opened fire during clashes between villagers who were demonstrating both for and against the project.

At least five people were shot dead and dozens injured when Bangladesh police opened fire Saturday on demonstrating workers at the construction site of a Chinese-financed power plant, officials said. Police started shooting after workers became violent, said Saiduzzman Chowdhury, government administrator in the southern coastal town of Banshkhali. They were protesting over unpaid wages, working hours and alleged discrimination. Azizul Islam, Banshkhali police chief, said about 2,000 protesters threw rocks and bricks at police, who responded with gunfire. The 2.5 billion-dollar, 1,200-megawatt coal power plant, 30 percent owned by Chinese engineering giant SEPCOIII, has been at the centre of other deadly protests in recent years. Police opened fire on a protest by villagers in 2016, when four people were killed. One man was killed in 2017 when police fired shots at a rally. Four bodies with bullet wounds were taken from the latest protests to Banshkhali's main hospital, a doctor there said, adding that 12 others were being treated for wounds. Police confirmed a fifth victim and 19 injured, including three police, were taken to a hospital in Chittagong. Rights activists say the SS Power One plant, 70 percent owned by the S. Alam Group, does not meet environmental impact standards and was built without public consultation. It is one of the biggest investments made by Chinese companies in Bangladesh. The deal was one of many announced when President Xi Jinping visited in 2016. S. Alam executive director Subrata Kumar Bhowmick said the plant was 40 percent finished and about 3,000 construction workers were employed there. Two company officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Chinese contractor employed the workers.

Tens of thousands of people scrambled to get the last trains, buses and ferries out of Dhaka yesterday before a nationwide transport shutdown to halt the spread of coronavirus took hold. With new cases and deaths hitting record numbers, Bangladesh’s government has ordered all offices and shops to close for eight days from 6am today. The country will become virtually cut off with all international flights halted, and domestic transport curtailed. Many in the capital of 20mn desperately sought any vehicle to get them back to home villages and towns, with taxi and bus fares quickly rising. Crowds besieged the main bus stations of the city, despite most inter-city routes having stopped on April 5 after officials imposed fresh restrictions. “So there is no way we can take them back to their homes,” said bus firm manager Rakib Rahman, adding: “But the microbus, car and motorbike drivers are making a fortune thanks to this mad rush”. Police also stopped people boarding trucks that were taking some out of the city, fearing the cramped vehicles would easily allow the virus to spread. Hamidur Rahman, a 25-year-old shopping mall worker, was unable to get a minibus from Gabtoli bus station to his home in western Jeysore district. “A regular bus ticket to Jessore costs a maximum of 500 taka ($6). We have to pay 1,000 for a seat,” he said, after banding together with 12 others to rent an entire bus. Most of the exodus was made up of informal workers in Dhaka stores, offices and markets. Didarul Alam, a 22-year-old student and part-time primary school tutor, said he could not afford to stay in Dhaka. “The students tell me they don’t need my services. The maid who cooks in our dormitory has left so I am going too,” he said.

The search for survivors from a ferry disaster in Bangladesh was called off yesterday, officials said, with the death toll rising to 28 when rescuers pulled the vessel from the water and found bodies inside. The one-and-a-half storey ferry was lifted from the heavily polluted Shitalakshya River in the central district of Narayanganj yesterday, some 18 hours after it sank following a collision with a bigger cargo vessel on Sunday. “We have found 23 bodies today...Five bodies were found Sunday night,” local official Mustain Billah said. Six children were among the dead, he added. The vessel, named Sabit Al Hasan, sank less than an hour after it had departed Narayanganj, 20 kilometres  from the capital Dhaka, officials said. A local police inspector said the ferry was packed with passengers after the government confirmed it would impose a seven-day lockdown across the country to combat the recent rise in coronavirus cases. Billah said the ship was carrying at least 46 people when it left. “Some 20 people swam to safety after the vessel sank,” he said. He said search operations, which were led by fire brigade divers and other rescuers, were called off yesterday evening as authorities believed no one else was missing. Hundreds of onlookers and relatives of the missing had watched from the shore, but many have since left, he said. “I don’t think anyone is missing as most of the relatives have left the riverbanks,” Billah said, adding that authorities had ordered a probe into the accident. Local police chief Dipak Saha said rescue efforts on Sunday had been hampered for hours by a powerful storm that hit after the accident. Under the lockdown, all domestic travel services – including buses, ferries, trains and flights – will be suspended. Shops and malls will be shut for a week and a night curfew will come into effect. Public and private sector businesses were told to only have a skeleton crew in their offices. Ferry accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers. Millions of people are heavily reliant on ferries for transport, particularly in the country’s southern coastal region, but the vessels have a poor safety record. Experts blame poor maintenance, lax safety standards at shipyards and overcrowding for many of the accidents. In June last year, a ferry sank in Dhaka after it was hit from behind by another ferry, killing at least 32 people. In February 2015, at least 78 people died when an overcrowded ship collided with a cargo boat in a central Bangladesh river. The number of accidents has dropped sharply in recent years as authorities crack down on unseaworthy vessels.

A Bangladesh ferry carrying around 50 passengers collided with a cargo vessel and sank on Sunday in the Shitalakhsya River south of the capital Dhaka, leaving at least 26 people dead and a few still missing, officials said. Twenty one bodies had been recovered on Monday. The ferry sank just after it departed from the industrial Narayanganj district about 20 kms from Dhaka, to Munshiganj, said Mustain Billah, Narayanganj district administrator. "Most of the bodies were found inside the sunken boat after it was dragged to the bank," he said, adding a few still could be missing. Police and officials said some of the passengers managed to swim ashore. Relatives gathered at the river bank to search for their loved ones. Rescuers, including divers from the fire brigade, were searching for survivors on Monday while salvage operations were hampered by a storm last night. The boat was packed with people rushing to leave the city after the government announced a week-long nationwide lockdown from Monday to tackle a spike in Covid-19 cases. Bangladesh reported a record daily jump of 7,087 coronavirus infections on Sunday, taking its total number of cases to 637,364 with 9,266 deaths. Hundreds of people die each year in ferry accidents in Bangladesh, a low-lying country that has extensive inland waterways but lax safety standards.

Two people died in fresh clashes between protesters and Bangladesh police yesterday, raising the death toll from protests against the visit of India’s nationalist leader to 13, officials said. The protesters – mostly from the group Hefazat-e-Islam – were angry at the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Bangladesh marked 50 years of independence. Five people died on Friday, and another six the next day, after police shot at demonstrators in several major districts across the nation of 168mn people. Two others – a 19-year-old and a 23-year-old – died in the eastern district of Brahmanbaria after officers opened fire in clashes in the rural town of Sarail yesterday, a police spokesman said “They (protesters) stormed a highway police station, torching it and injuring at least 35 policemen. Police opened fire in self-defence,” the spokesman said. The spokesman did not say if the pair had been shot dead by police. He said some 3,000 protesters, mostly Hefazat supporters, had blocked a highway and attacked police with bricks and stones. Another person was feared dead, Sarail’s government administrator, Ariful Haq Mridul, said. Bangladesh’s home minister Asaduzzaman Khan called for the protests to be halted. “Our security forces are observing this with patience,” Khan told reporters yesterday. “We think if this is not stopped, we’ll take necessary actions.” At another protest in Narayanganj just outside the capital Dhaka yesterday, Hefazat supporters chanted “action, action, direct action” as they blocked the key highway linking Dhaka with the port city of Chittagong. Hundreds of demonstrators burnt furniture and tyres on the roads as they chanted anti-Modi slogans and called on authorities to investigate the earlier shootings. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after the protesters barricaded parts of the highway. A police spokesman said they had since left the road. The country’s largest Bengali daily, Prothom Alo, said at least 15 people were injured in the Narayanganj clashes. Bangladesh’s largest English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, reported that at least 10 people were injured when Hefazat supporters attacked a train carrying passengers from Dhaka to Chittagong.

At least five people were killed and dozens injured in police gunfire in eastern Bangladesh yesterday, a hospital doctor said, as security forces tried to quell protests against the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hundreds of students from madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, clashed with police and border troops in the eastern Brahmanbaria district. Police said they had to open fire to control the violence. Many Islamist groups in Bangladesh accuse Modi of alienating minority Muslims in Hindu-majority India. The two countries issued a joint statement celebrating their co-operation and partnership but the Bangladesh government made no comment about the protests. “We received three bullet-hit dead bodies and two others succumbed to their injuries later,” Abdullah al-Mamun, a doctor at the government-owned Brahmanbaria General Hospital, told Reuters. A local police officer confirmed five had died but declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to media. Bangladeshi police did not officially confirm the death toll. Protests raged across Bangladesh against Modi but also over the police killing of Islamists who had demonstrated against his two-day visit. Four supporters of the Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam were killed on Friday after police opened fire when protesters allegedly attacked a police station in the southeastern town of Chittagong. Dozens were also hurt in the capital Dhaka on Friday when police used rubber bullets and teargas in clashes with protesters. Yesterday, hundreds of members of Hefazat-e-Islam and other Islamist groups marched through Chittagong and Dhaka protesting the deaths of their supporters. “Police opened fire on our peaceful supporters,” the group’s organising secretary Azizul Haque told a rally in Chittagong. “We will not let the blood of our brothers go in vain.” Hefazat-e-Islam, which translates as Protection of Islam, has called for a nationwide strike today to protest the killings. Non-profit group Amnesty International also criticised the police action in Chittagong. “The right to peaceful protest has come under concerted attack, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, culminating in this type of bloody repression,” Sultan Mohammed Zakaria, Amnesty’s south Asia researcher, said in a statement. Modi landed in Dhaka on Friday, his first international trip since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic last year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence. He left the country yesterday after holding talks with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Four supporters of a hardline group were shot dead in Bangladesh on Friday in violent demonstrations over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tour to Dhaka, officials said. Police said four bodies of members of Hefazat-e-Islam, a hardline group, were brought to Chittagong Medical College Hospital after violence erupted at Hathazari, a rural town where the group's main leaders are based. "We got four bodies here. They are all hit with bullets. Three of them are madrasa students and another a tailor," Alauddin Talukder, a police inspector at the hospital, told AFP. He did not say who opened fire at the demonstrations.

President Joe Biden warned yesterday the United States will “respond accordingly” if North Korea escalates its weapons testing, after Pyongyang fired two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea in its first substantive provocation of the new US administration. The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives. Biden said that the United States was “consulting with our partners and allies,” and warned North Korea that “there will be responses if they choose to escalate. We will respond accordingly.” “I’m also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearisation,” he added. Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new administration took office, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week. But Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said the North fired two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, known as the East Sea in Korea, from South Hamgyong province. They travelled 450 kilometres and reached a maximum altitude of 60 kilometres, the JCS added, and after an emergency meeting South Korea’s National Security Council expressed “deep concern” at the launch. North Korea is banned from developing any ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions, and is under multiple international sanctions over its weapons programmes. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was unequivocal, telling reporters: “North Korea launched two ballistic missiles.” It had been a year since the last such incident, he added, saying: “This threatens the peace and security of our country and the region. It is also a violation of the UN resolution.” Tokyo said they came down outside the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone. Rebuke poured in from Germany, France and Britain which each condemned the tests as violations of UN Security Council resolutions. Britain’s Asia minister Nigel Adams also warned North Korea to refrain from further provocations and “engage in meaningful negotiations with the US.” Pyongyang has made rapid progress in its capabilities under North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, testing missiles capable of reaching the entire continental United States as tensions mounted in 2017. Ex-US president Donald Trump’s first year in office was marked by a series of escalating launches, accompanied by a war of words between him and Kim. The two then embarked on an extraordinary diplomatic bromance, holding two headline-grabbing summits in Singapore and Vietnam. The United States pulled back on some joint military exercises with South Korea while the North froze intercontinental ballistic missile tests. But the February 2019 Hanoi summit broke up over sanctions relief and what North Korea would be willing to give up in return. Communications then dried up, despite a third encounter in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean peninsula, and no substantive progress was made towards denuclearisation. “North Korea appears to be returning to a familiar pattern of using provocations to raise tensions and garner attention,” said Jean Lee of the Wilson Center in Washington. Pyongyang carried out a series of weapons tests last year that it called “long-range artillery” but others described as short-range ballistic missiles. Trump had been “willing to turn a blind eye to North Korea’s ballistic missile launches as long as they were not tests of long-range missiles”, Lee said. “But I suspect the Biden administration will confront any confirmed ballistic missile launches that violate UN Security Council resolutions.” Yesterday’s launch comes after Pyongyang fired two short-range, non-ballistic missiles in a westerly direction towards China at the weekend, which US officials played down as not a violation of UN resolutions. That launch followed joint exercises by the US and South Korean militaries and a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss alliance and security issues. During their trip to Seoul and Tokyo, Blinken repeatedly stressed the importance of denuclearising North Korea. Biden administration officials say they have sought to reach out to Pyongyang through several channels but have received no response so far. They are now finalising a strategy that the White House will discuss with Japanese and South Korean security officials next week.

About 30,000 Rohingya refugees who fled a deadly blaze at camps in Bangladesh returned to their scorched shanties yesterday, seeking to rebuild their makeshift homes as others searched for missing relatives, officials and aid groups said. The settlements in southeast Bangladesh — home to nearly a million of the minority from Myanmar, many of whom escaped a military crackdown in 2017 — were hit by a major fire on Monday that left at least 15 people dead and nearly 50,000 homeless. “We have provided them housing materials such as bamboo, tarpaulins, floor mats, ropes and utensils,” Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner Shah Rezwan Hayat told AFP of the returning Rohingya, who had sought refuge in other camps. Hayat said government officials and aid workers, including from the United Nations, were helping the refugees remove the destroyed shelters and build temporary ones. Some Rohingya and their children could be seen scouring the blackened sites for their treasured gold jewellery. “After the fire my family got scattered. It took hours to know who had gone where,” 42-year-old father-of-eight Nur Syed said at one of the fire-hit camps after a shelter for his family was built.  Tyeba Khatun, a woman in her 60s who lived in a camp with her husband, said they lost all their possessions from  Myanmar.

At least 15 people have been killed in a massive fire that ripped through a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, while 400 remain missing, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday. ‘It is massive, it is devastating,’ said the UNHCR's Johannes van der Klaauw, who joined a Geneva briefing virtually from Dhaka, Bangladesh. ‘We still have 400 people unaccounted for, maybe somewhere in the rubble,’ he said. He added that the UNHCR has reports of 560 people injured and 45,000 people displaced.  

A huge fire swept through a Rohingya refugee camp in southern Bangladesh yesterday, destroying thousands of homes and killing several people, officials and witnesses said, in the worst blaze to hit the settlement in recent years.  Video and photographs showed a blaze ripping through the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar. Black smoke billowed over burning shanties and tents as people scrambled to recover their possessions. “Fire services, rescue and response teams and volunteers are at the scene to try to control the fire and prevent it spreading further,” said Louise Donovan, spokesperson for UN refugee agency UNHCR in Cox’s Bazar. Mohamed Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said authorities were trying to control the blaze. Rohingya refugees in the camps said many homes were burned down and several people had died, but neither the authorities nor the UNHCR could confirm the number of deaths. The cause of the blaze has not been established. More than a million Rohingya live in the camps in southern Bangladesh, the vast majority having fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that UN investigators said was executed with “genocidal intent”. Zaifur Hussein, a 50-year-old refugee who escaped the fire but lost his home and was sheltering with friends, said he believed dozens may have been killed and that fencing around the camps made it difficult to flee. “When we were in Myanmar we faced lots of problems... they destroyed everything,” he said. “Now it has happened again.” Snigdha Chakraborty, the Bangladesh director for Catholic Relief Services, said she was worried about the lack of medical facilities in the area. “Medical facilities are basic and burns require sophisticated treatment, plus hospital beds are already partly taken up with Covid-19 patients,” she said. “Most likely there will be fatalities because the fire is so large.” A Rohingya leader in Cox’s Bazar, a sliver of land bordering Myanmar in southeastern Bangladesh, said he saw several dead bodies. “Thousand of huts were totally burned down,” Mohamed Nowkhim told Reuters. Another large blaze tore through the camp in January, destroying homes but causing no casualties. The risk of fire in the densely populated camps is high, and Monday’s blaze was the largest yet, said Onno Van Manen, Country Director of Save the Children in Bangladesh. “It is another devastating blow to the Rohingya refugees who live here. Just a couple of days ago we lost one of our health facilities in another fire,” he said. The UNHCR said humanitarian partners had mobilised hundreds of volunteers from nearby camps for the support operation, as well as fire safety vehicles and equipment.

Three coronavirus patients died in a hospital fire in the Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, on Wednesday, officials said. The patients, who were using ventilators in the hospital's intensive-care unit, died after the fire triggered an evacuation, said Nazmul Haque, director of the hospital. It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, a fire service official said. Hospitals are struggling to deal with a fresh spike in coronavirus infections this month in Bangladesh, which has reported 559,168 cases and 8,571 deaths.

Bangladesh called for peace and stability in Myanmar after a military coup on Monday, and said it hoped its neighbour make genuine efforts to move forward the stalled process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees. Bangladesh has sheltered 1 million Rohingya who had fled violence in Myanmar, where most of them are denied citizenship. A UN-backed repatriation process has failed to take off despite multiple attempts from Bangladesh, which has now started sending some of the refugees to an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal. "We have been persistent in developing mutually beneficial relations with Myanmar and have been working with Myanmar for the voluntary, safe and sustained repatriation of the Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters in a statement. "We expect these processes to continue in right earnest." Myanmar's military seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other leaders of her National League for Democracy party in early morning raids. "We hope that the democratic process and constitutional arrangements will be upheld in Myanmar," Bangladesh said. "As an immediate and friendly neighbour, we would like to see peace and stability in Myanmar." Suu Kyi's international reputation was damaged after she failed to stop the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from western Rakhine State in 2017. Nevertheless, Rohingya in Bangladesh condemned the action against politicians in their home country. "We urge the global community to come forward and restore democracy at any cost," Rohingya leader Dil Mohammed told Reuters by phone.  

Bangladesh is set to move a second batch of Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar to the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal this month, officials said on Sunday, despite calls by rights groups not to carry out further relocations. Around 1,000 Rohingya refugees will be moved to the island in the next few days after Bangladesh relocated more than 1,600 early this month, two officials with the direct knowledge of the matter said. "They will be moved to Chittagong first and then to Bhasan Char, depending on the high tide," one of the officials said. The officials declined to be named as the issue had not been made public. Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said the relocation was voluntary. "They will not be sent against their will." The United Nations has said it has not been allowed to carry out a technical and safety assessment of Bhasan Char, a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, and was not involved in the transfer of refugees there. Bangladesh says it is transferring only people who are willing to go and the move will ease chronic overcrowding in camps that are home to more than 1 million Rohingya. But refugees and humanitarian workers say some of the Rohingya have been coerced into going to the island, which emerged from the sea 20 years ago. Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen told Reuters earlier this month the United Nations should first assess and verify how conducive the environment in Myanmar's Rakhine state was for repatriating the refugees, before carrying out an assessment of Bhasan Char. Several attempts to kickstart repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar have failed after refugees said they were too fearful of further violence to return.

The highest point on Earth got a bit higher yesterday as China and Nepal finally agreed on a precise elevation for Mount Everest after years of debate. The agreed height of 8,848.86 metres (29,031 feet) – unveiled at a news conference in Kathmandu – was 86 centimetres (2.8 feet) higher than the measurement previously recognised by Nepal, and more than four metres above China’s official figure. This discrepancy was due to China measuring the rock base on the summit and not – as with the new reading – the covering of snow and ice on the peak. Everest straddles the border of Nepal and China. Employing trigonometry hundreds of miles away on the Indian plains, British colonial geographers first determined Everest’s height in 1856 at 8,840 metres (29,002 feet) above sea level. After Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa famously first reached the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953, an Indian survey readjusted the altitude to 8,848 metres (29,028 feet). That measurement was widely accepted, with the number appealing not only to ambitious mountaineers but also inspiring names for adventure clothing lines, restaurants and even a vodka brand. In 1999, the US National Geographic Society concluded the world’s highest point was 8,850 metres (29,035 feet), but Nepal never officially recognised this – although it is widely quoted. China meanwhile conducted several surveys of its own, and in 2005 came up with a measurement of 8,844.43 metres (29,015 feet). The provoked a row with Nepal, which was only resolved in 2010 when Kathmandu and Beijing agreed that their measurements referred to different things – one to the height of Everest’s rock and the other to the height of its snowcap. Nepal decided to conduct a survey – initially alone and later joined by China – after suggestions that tectonic plate movements including a major earthquake in 2015 may have affected the height. About 300 Nepali experts and surveyors were involved in the exercise – some on foot and others in helicopters – to reach data collection stations. Last spring, Nepali surveyors reached the summit of Everest with over 40 kilograms (90 pounds) of equipment, including a Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) receiver. They spent roughly two freezing hours collecting data as dozens of climbers stood on top of the mountain. “Climbing Everest alone is a challenging task, but we also had to measure it,” Khim Lal Gautam, a Survey Department official who lost a toe to frostbite in the expedition, said. Nepal was due to release the results earlier this year but then China became involved after a visit to Nepal in October 2019 by President Xi Jinping. This year a Chinese survey expedition had a more quiet working space on the summit as they were the only climbers on a mountain shut because of the coronavirus pandemic. Dang Yamin, an expert at the National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that the final result was an average value between the measurements by Nepal and China, in accordance with scientific rules.