Early on Monday morning, a Rohingya community leader known as the “head majhi” was shot and killed in a refugee camp in Ukhiya upazila, Cox’s Bazar.
Mohammad Ilias, a 43-year-old chief majhi of Camp 4 expansion, passed away. According to investigators, he was also a committed participant in the armed group Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO).
This murder happened 23 hours after the early Sunday morning assassination of Rohingya adolescent Syed Noor at Camp 4. It is purported to have been motivated by a desire to establish supremacy in the camp.
With these most recent killings, five Rohingyas have perished in the Ukhiya and Teknaf camps during the past eight days.
The four killings at Ukhiya have been attributed to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an armed group based in Myanmar, while a group of thieves is said to have killed someone in the Teknaf camp.
As a result of recent killings in the camps, Rohingya refugees are growing more worried for their safety.
Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Ukhiya Police Station Shameem Hossain reported that approximately ten to fifteen armed attackers stormed into Ilias’s home and shot him dead after dragging him behind a neighboring NGO office.
The deceased’s body has been taken for a post-mortem examination to the morgue of the Sadar Hospital in Cox’s Bazar District.
Approximately at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, Syed Noor from Camp 4 was also shot and killed, purportedly by Arsa criminals.
On May 5, Arsa members are suspected of also being responsible for the 12-hour deaths of RSO member Noor Kamal, 29, of Balukhali (Camp-18), and RSO leader Zafar Ahmad, 42, of Camp 4.
On May 11, robbers shot and killed 48-year-old Mohammad Alam, a resident of the E-Block of Mochni registered Rohingya camp under Hnila of Teknaf upazila of Cox’s Bazar, for giving information to law enforcement.
