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Showing posts from May 13, 2013

Rohingya evacuated from cyclone

Bangkok Post: May 13, 2013 YANGON - Myanmar on Sunday began moving people into emergency shelters as a cyclone threatened to batter a violence-wracked region home to tens of thousands of internal refugees. About 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in flimsy tents or makeshift housing are seen as particularly vulnerable to cyclone Mahasen, which was gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal. The cyclone is expected to make landfall somewhere near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on Thursday morning, according to Myanmar's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology. It said Mahasen, which was packing winds of up to about 100 kilometres (60 miles) per hour, was likely to intensify into a "severe cyclonic storm" within the  next  24 hours, warning ships to be on alert. The IDPs at particular risk are mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims uprooted by two outbreaks of deadly religious violence since June last year. "There are people still living in t