Rohingya refugees face heavy rain in Bangladesh

Groups of Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar were on the move again on Tuesday and Wednesday, forced by the rains to salvage what was left of their shanties and move toward drier ground in hopes of some relief – if the mudslides don't come next.

Fighting in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state has forced 422,000 Rohingya to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh, where unofficial shelters have sprung up outside of two government-run camps.

Several Rohingya camps in this Bangladesh coastal city are flooded from three days of unrelenting downpours. People in the camps were pelted with heavy rain while packing their meagre belongings into plastic sacks and trying to find fresh shelter.

TRT World's Shamim Chowdhury reports from a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh army steps up

Bangladesh's army was ordered to take a bigger role helping hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar, amid warnings it could take six months to register the new refugees.

Troops would be deployed immediately in Cox's Bazar near the border where more than 420,000 Rohingya Muslims have arrived since August 25, said Obaidul Quader, a senior minister and deputy head of the ruling Awami League party.

Soldiers would help build shelters and toilets for the thousands of refugees still sleeping in the open under pounding monsoon rain, Quader said. 

"The army presence is especially needed on the spot to construct their shelters, which is a very tough task, and ensure sanitation," he said.

The latest order came from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Quader said.

The soldiers would also ensure order and assist with distributing relief, a chaotic process that seen stampedes as donors have hurled food and other staples from moving trucks.

Refugees face trafficking risk

Rohingyas are "at the mercy" of human traffickers, the United Nations migration agency warned on Wednesday, saying well-managed refugee camps were needed to reduce the risk.

But the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the new arrivals – the majority of them women and children - are at risk of human trafficking, as officials and aid workers struggle to cope with the influx.

"Most have no money, no food, no clean water, no shelter and don't speak the language," IOM's Asia-Pacific spokesman Chris Lom told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from the Bangladeshi border district of Cox's Bazar.

"That leaves them potentially at the mercy of anyone offering help and they may end up as victims of trafficking."

Lom said the IOM has sent a counter-trafficking specialist to the border but warned that effectively-run camps were needed to reduce the dangers.

"The best way to minimise this risk is to have a functioning camp management system in the locations where they are settled," he said.

"We - the humanitarian agencies on the ground - are currently a long way from being able to provide this, given the numbers and the speed at which people have arrived and continue to arrive."

Rohingya seeking to escape persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar have been trafficked or smuggled by road and sea to places like Thailand and Malaysia in the past.