More than 60 Rohingya drown after shipwreck

The United Nations migration agency on Friday said more than 60 Rohingya Muslims fleeing by boat to Bangladesh are either confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead after a shipwreck in the Bay of Bengal. Spokesman Joel Millman said 23 refugees have been confirmed dead while 40 others are missing. Millman said about 80 people boarded the vessel, which drifted at sea for two days with no food and battled rough weather. More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from Burma, also known as Myanmar, since renewed clashes on Aug 25. Rohingya militants attacked security posts in restive Rakhine state, and government forces responded with clearance operations. The United Nations accused Myanmar forces of ethnic cleansing, a claim political leaders have denied. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar until the military puts sufficient accountability measures in place. “We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appeared to be—a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley told the UN Security Council.