Bangladesh has proposed creating "safe zones" run by aid groups for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine state to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees crossing into its territory following a military crackdown, report agencies.
The United States has said it is working through the United Nations and other international organisations to assist tens of thousands of civilians who have fled to Bangladesh since August the 25th.
"We are also communicating with Burma's neighbors and other concerned international partners on efforts to end the violence and assist affected communities there," said Heather Nauert, Spokesperson at the US Department of States in a regular briefing in Washington, DC on Thursday.
The US said they are deeply concerned by the troubling situation in Burma's northern Rakhine State.
"There has been a significant displacement of local populations, following serious allegations of human rights abuses, including mass burnings of Rohingya villages and violence conducted by security forces and also armed civilians," said the Spokesperson.
Two US Senators also condemned the horrific acts of violence being committed against the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar.
The two US Senators are Dick Durbin and John McCain - have urged Aung San Suu Kyi to live up to her historic democratic and human rights ideals by taking action to stop this humanitarian tragedy.
The Bangladesh proposal, the latest in a string of ideas floated by Dhaka, is unlikely to get much traction in Myanmar, where many consider the Rohingya community of 1.1 million as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That will leave Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, with little choice but to open new camps for refugees.
Dhaka sent the proposal to the Myanmar government through the International Committee of the Red Cross to secure three areas in Rakhine, home to the Rohingya community, suggesting that people displaced by the violence be relocated there under the supervision of an international organisation, such as the United Nations.
"The logic of the creation of such zones is that no Rohingya can come inside Bangladesh," said Shahidul Haque, Bangladesh's foreign secretary, the top civil servant in the foreign ministry.
The Red Cross confirmed that it had passed on the request to Myanmar but said that it was a political decision for the two countries to make.
A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The decades-old conflict in Rakhine flared most recently on Aug 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked several police posts and an army base. Since then, an estimated 270,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, joining more than 400,000 others already living there in cramped makeshift camps since the early 1990s.
More than 1,000 people may already have been killed in Myanmar, mostly minority Rohingya Muslims -- more than twice the government's total-a senior United Nations representative said on Friday, urging Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday, "The two refugee camps in Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh - home to nearly 34,000 Rohingya refugees before this influx - are now bursting at the seams."
"The population has more than doubled in two weeks, totaling more than 70,000. There is an urgent need for more land and shelters," UNHCR said in a briefing note for reporters in Geneva.
"The vast majority are women, including mothers with newborn babies, families with children. They arrive in poor condition, exhausted, hungry and desperate for shelter."
The United Nations was expecting a total refugee influx of 300,000, up from a previous estimate of 120,000, an official told a news agency on Wednesday.
On the basis of witness testimonies and the pattern of previous outbreaks of violence, said Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, "perhaps about a thousand or more are already dead".
Bangladesh has decided to create a database of the refugees by collecting biometric details from the hundreds of thousands arriving through various points of its southeast border.
The biometric database is part of an initiative to shelter them in one place, said Cox's Bazar Additional District Magistrate Khaled Mahmud on Friday.
Lee, a South Korean academic, said she feared "it's going to be one of the worst disasters that the world and Myanmar has seen in recent years".
In updated figures released by the authorities on Thursday, Myanmar said 6,600 Rohingya homes and 201 non-Muslim homes had been burned to the ground since August 25.
There are widespread fears that tens of thousands more could try to cross if the violence doesn't abate. Recent pictures from the border between the two countries show hundreds of Rohingya men, women and children trying to cross over into Bangladesh on foot and by boat.
The humanitarian crisis next door has left Bangladesh scrambling to deal with people that it does not welcome either.
Government officials said on Thursday Dhaka would make another 1,500 acres (607 hectares) of land available for camps to house refugees near Cox's Bazar, where many refugees already live as it is near the border with Myanmar.
"They will be given temporary shelter," said Kazi Abdur Rahman, additional deputy commissioner of Cox's Bazar. But Rahman added that the refugees would be fingerprinted and confined to the camp so that they did not mix with the local community.
These measures, however, do not offer a long-term solution to the crisis, and Dhaka says it is getting little support from its neighbour, which has been accused of trying to engineer ethnic cleansing within its borders.
Bangladesh officials said they had proposed joint patrolling along the border but did not receive a response from Myanmar.
Earlier this week, Bangladesh lodged a protest after it said Myanmar had laid landmines near the border between the two countries.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, has come under pressure to halt violence against Rohingya. She has said that her government was doing its best to protect everyone in Rakhine but did not refer specifically to the Rohingya exodus.
"The solution lies in Myanmar. The UN hopes that Myanmar can address the root causes of the problem," said Shinji Kubo, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh.
Kubo said the Bangladesh government was doing its best by accepting the refugees instead of sending them back.
Bangladesh officials are turning to the international community for help, claiming support from countries such as Turkey, which has promised aid.
On Friday, a Malaysian coast guard official said the country would not turn away Rohingya Muslims and is willing to provide them temporary shelter. But any such voyage would be hazardous for the next few months, because of the annual monsoon.
"The world community must come forward to help them, not by putting pressure on Bangladesh but by putting pressure on Myanmar not to resort to these atrocities and violence," said H.T. Imam, a senior aide to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
"The only solution is to force Myanmar to take back their citizens through international pressure. And we are working with our partners on that," Imam said.
Besides the creation of internationally-controlled safe zones in Rakhine state, Bangladesh has also mooted creating a buffer zone along the border, where the international community could set up camps and provide for the refugees, the officials said. Further details of the plan could not be learnt.
"We will give aid agencies access. But we are not interested to give them shelter here. We are already overburdened," said Mostafa Kamal Uddin, Bangladesh's home secretary.
Iran's foreign minister has criticised the international community for remaining silent on the violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and called for quick action "to end the genocide".
"The international community has no excuse to allow the genocide of Rohingya Muslims to continue in front of our eyes," Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Thursday.
He also demanded urgent action to address the plight of Rohingya Muslims, saying, "We must act now before it's too late."
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said on Thursday that it had set up a working group to help the Myanmar Muslims following an order by President Hassan Rouhani.
Canada has strongly condemned the escalating violence - and its impact on innocent people - in northern Rakhine State of Myanmar and called for calm.
"We urge all parties involved to exercise restraint and to ensure the safety, protection and support for civilians - including the Rohingya," reads a statement issued recently on the situation in Myanmar.
