Three Rohingya men, suspected of being child abductors, were killed in a gunfight with lawmen near a refugee camp in South-Eastern Bangladesh, according to police.
Officer Pradip Kumar said the gunfight took place on Friday when the law-enforcement officers raided a den of criminals based on information that they had taken a child hostage for ransom from a family near the Leda refugee camp.
Police retaliated after the gang fired their guns, leaving three of them dead by the side of a hill in Teknaf, located over 370 kilometres South-East of the capital Dhaka, he added.
The child was rescued unhurt as other members of the criminal gang fled the scene, Kumar said.
Police also found firearms and bullets at the scene.
The group abducted the child few days ago and asked the family to pay nearly 6,000 dollars as ransom for his release, according to a case filed with the police.
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The officer said a group of Rohingya Muslims, living in the refugee camps set up after their mass exodus from Myanmar in 2017, have been involved in various criminal activities, including abduction, trafficking, drug smuggling and murder, in and around the camps.
Bangladesh has been hosting over one million Rohingya Muslims in crowded camps in South-Eastern Cox’s Bazar district after they were driven away from their homes in neighbouring Rakhine state of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Of them, nearly 750,000 crossed the border after the Myanmar army launched a crackdown against the minority group in August 2017.
The United Nations termed the clampdown a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.’’
(dpa/NAN)