Rohingya refugees from Burma packed into camps and makeshift settlements in Bangladesh have become desperate for scant basic resources and dwindling supplies.

Fights are erupting over food and water. Women and children are knocking on car windows or tugging at the clothes of passing reporters while rubbing their bellies and begging for food.

UN agencies estimate that more than a quarter of a million Rohingya Muslims have arrived in the Cox’s Bazar region in just the last two weeks, joining at least 100,000 who were already there after fleeing earlier riots or persecution in Buddhist-majority Burma.

(AP)
(AP)

Many of the newly arrived were initially stunned and traumatised after fleeing violence that erupted on August 25 in Burma’s Rakhine state.

They are now growing desperate as they search for food distribution points that appeared only in recent days, passing out packets of biscuits and 55lb bags of rice.

One aid worker who asked not to be identified said “stocks are running out” with the refugees’ needs far greater than what they had imagined. “It is impossible to keep up,” she said.

At one food distribution point, women were volunteering to help keep order by gently tapping people with bamboo sticks to urge them back in line.

Weary women carried infants in their arms while clutching other children to their sides, afraid of being separated in the crowds.

One 40-year-old man, faint with hunger, collapsed while waiting and could not stand again by himself when others tried to help him up. They drizzled water between his lips in an attempt to revive him, to no avail.

“Everyone is hungry. Everyone has been waiting for hours,” said another aid worker.

He said the crowds were becoming unmanageable, and that aid agencies may need to ask for a police presence.

“We are not prepared here for such a huge number,” he said.