‘My family died in front of my eyes’

Warning: This article incorporates particulars some readers could discover distressing.

Fayaz and his spouse believed they have been moments from security when the bombs started to fall: “We have been getting on the boat one after one other – that’s after they began bombing us.”

Wails and shouts stuffed the air round 17:00 native time on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as 1000’s of scared Rohingyas made their approach to the banks of the Naf river within the city of Maungdaw.

Attacks on villages earlier within the space meant this was what a whole bunch of households, together with Fayaz’s, noticed as their solely choice – that to get to security, they needed to escape from western Myanmar to Bangladesh’s safer shores.

Fayaz was carrying luggage filled with no matter that they had managed to seize. His spouse was carrying their six-year-old daughter, their eldest was working alongside them. His spouse’s sister was strolling forward, with the couple’s eight-month-old son in her arms.

The first bomb killed his sister-in-law immediately. The child was badly injured – however alive.

“I ran and carried him… But he died whereas we have been ready for the bombing to cease.”

Nisar* had additionally made it to the riverbank by about 17:00, having determined to flee along with his mom, spouse, son, daughter and sister. “We heard drones overhead after which the loud sound of an explosion,” he remembers. “We have been all thrown to the bottom. They dropped bombs on us utilizing drones.”

Nisar was the one considered one of his household to outlive.

Fayaz, his spouse and daughters escaped and would ultimately make it throughout the river. Despite his pleas, the boatman refused to permit Fayaz to carry the child’s physique with them. “He stated there was no level in carrying the useless, so I dug a gap by the river financial institution and unexpectedly buried him.”

Now they’re all within the relative security of Bangladesh, but when they’re caught by authorities right here they might be despatched again. Nisar clutches a Quran, unable nonetheless to course of how his world was shattered in a single day.

“If I’d identified what would occur, I’d by no means have tried to depart that day,” Nisar says.

It is notoriously tough to piece collectively what is occurring in Myanmar’s civil battle. But the BBC has managed to assemble an image of what occurred on the night of 5 August by means of a sequence of unique interviews with greater than a dozen Rohingya survivors who escaped to Bangladesh, and the movies they shared.

All of the survivors – unarmed Rohingya civilians – recount listening to many bombs exploding over a interval of two hours. While most described the bombs being dropped by drones, a weapon more and more being utilized in Myanmar, some stated they have been hit by mortars and gunfire. The MSF clinic working in Bangladesh has stated it noticed an enormous surge in wounded Rohingya within the days that adopted – half of the injured have been girls and youngsters.

Survivors’ movies analysed by BBC Verify present the river financial institution lined in bloodied our bodies, a lot of them girls and youngsters. There’s no verified rely of the variety of folks killed, however a number of eyewitnesses have informed the BBC they noticed scores of our bodies.

Survivors informed us they have been attacked by the Arakan Army, one of many strongest rebel teams in Myanmar which in current months has pushed the navy out of practically all of Rakhine State. They stated they have been first attacked of their villages, forcing them to flee, after which have been attacked once more by the river financial institution as they sought to flee.

The AA declined to be interviewed however its spokesman Khaing Tukha denied the accusation and responded to the BBC’s questions with an announcement which stated “the incident didn’t happen in areas managed by us”. He additionally accused Rohingya activists of staging the bloodbath and falsely accusing the AA.

Nisar stands by his account, nevertheless.

“The Arakan Army are mendacity,” he says. “The assaults have been carried out by them. It was solely them in our space on that day. And they’ve been attacking us for weeks. They don’t need to go away any Muslim alive.”

Most of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims reside as a minority in Rakhine – a Buddhist-majority state, the place the 2 communities have lengthy had a fraught relationship. In 2017, when the Myanmar navy killed 1000’s of Rohingyas in what the UN described as “a textbook instance of ethnic cleaning”, native Rakhine males additionally joined the assaults. Now, amid a spiralling battle between the junta and the AA, which has robust assist within the ethnic Rakhine inhabitants, Rohingyas as soon as once more discover themselves trapped.

Despite the chance of being caught and returned to Myanmar by the Bangladeshi authorities, Rohingya survivors informed the BBC they wished to share particulars of the violence they confronted so it might not go undocumented, particularly because it unfolded in an space that’s now not accessible to rights teams or journalists.

“My coronary heart is damaged. Now, I’ve misplaced the whole lot. I don’t know why I survived,” Nisar says.

A rich Rohingya dealer, he bought his land and home because the shelling elevated close to his house in Rakhine. But the battle intensified quicker than he anticipated, and on the morning of 5 August, the household determined to depart Myanmar.

He is crying as he factors to his daughter’s physique in one of many movies: “My daughter died in my arms saying Allah’s title. She appears to be like so peaceable, like she’s sleeping. She cherished me a lot.”

In the identical video, he additionally factors to his spouse and sister, each severely injured however alive when the video was filmed. He couldn’t carry them out as bombs have been nonetheless falling, so he made the agonising selection to depart them behind. He came upon later that they had died.

“There was nowhere left that was protected, so we ran to the river to cross over to Bangladesh,” Fayaz says. The gunfire and bombs had adopted them from village to village, and so Fayaz gave all his cash to a boatman to hold them throughout the river.

Devastated and indignant, he holds up a photograph of his son’s bloodied physique.

“If the Arakan Army didn’t fireplace at us, then who did?” he asks. “The path that the bombs got here from, I do know the Arakan Army was there. Or was it thunder falling from the sky?”

These accusations increase severe questions in regards to the Arakan Army, which describes itself as a revolutionary motion representing all of the folks of Rakhine.

Since late final yr, the AA, a part of the bigger Three Brotherhood Alliance of armed insurgents in Myanmar, has made big positive factors in opposition to the navy.

But the military’s losses have introduced new risks for Rohingyas, who’ve beforehand informed the BBC they have been being forcibly recruited by the junta to combat the AA.

This, along with the choice by the Rohingya militant group ARSA to ally itself with the junta in opposition to the Rakhine insurgents, has soured already poor relations between the 2 communities and left Rohingya civilians weak to retribution.

One survivor of the 5 August assault informed the BBC that ARSA militants who had aligned themselves with the junta had been among the many fleeing crowd – and which may have provoked the assault.

“Even if there was any navy goal, there was a disproportionate use of pressure. There have been kids, girls, the aged that have been killed that day. It was additionally indiscriminate,” says John Quinley, a director of the human rights group Fortify Rights, which has been investigating the incident.

“So that would go away us to consider that there are affordable grounds to consider {that a} battle crime did occur on 5 August. The Arakan Army must be investigated for these crimes and Arakan Army senior commanders must be held accountable.”

This is a precarious second for the Rohingya group. More than one million of them fled to Bangladesh in 2017, the place they proceed to be restricted to densely-packed, squalid camps.

More have been arriving in current months because the battle in Rakhine reaches them however, it’s now not 2017, when Bangladesh opened its borders. This time, the federal government has stated it can’t enable any extra Rohingyas into the nation.

So survivors who can discover the cash to pay boatmen and traffickers – the BBC was informed it prices 600,000 Burmese kyat ($184; £141) per particular person – then have to slide previous Bangladeshi border guards and likelihood their luck with locals, or conceal in Rohingya camps.

When Fayaz and his household arrived in Bangladesh on the 6 August, the border guards gave them a meal however then put them on a ship and despatched them again.

“We spent two days afloat with no meals or water,” he says. “I gave my daughters water from the river to drink, and pleaded with a number of the others on the boat to offer them just a few biscuits from the packets that they had.”

They received into Bangladesh on their second try. But at the very least two boats have capsized due to overcrowding. One girl, a widow with 10 kids, stated she had managed to cover her household through the bombing, however 5 of her kids drowned when their boat overturned.

“My kids have been like items of my coronary heart. When I consider them, I need to die,” she says, weeping.

Her grandson, a wide-eyed eight-year-old boy, sits beside her. His mother and father and youthful brother additionally died.

But what of those that have been left behind? Phone and web networks in Maungdaw have been down for weeks however after repeated makes an attempt, the BBC contacted one man, who wished to stay nameless for his personal security.

“The Arakan Army has pressured us out of our properties and are holding us in colleges and mosques,” he stated. “I’m being stored with six different households in a small home.”

The Arakan Army informed the BBC that it rescued 20,000 civilians from the city amid preventing in opposition to the navy. It stated it was offering them with meals and medical therapy, and add that “these operations are carried out for the protection and safety of those people, not as pressured relocations”.

The man on the telephone rejected their claims. “The Arakan Army has informed us they’ll shoot us if we attempt to go away. We are working out of meals and medicines. I’m unwell, my mom is unwell. Lots of people have diarrhoea and are vomiting.”

He broke down, pleading for assist: “Tens of 1000’s of Rohingya are below menace right here. If you possibly can, please save us.”

Across the river in Bangladesh, Nisar appears to be like again at Myanmar. He can see the shore the place his household was killed.

“I by no means need to return.”

Additional reporting by Aamir Peerzada and Sanjay Ganguly

* Names have been modified on request