Wounded and grieving, Rohingya flee deadly attacks in Myanmar

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh - Ducking as mortar fire exploded around them, Rohingya refugee Mustafa Kamal and his family narrowly escaped the attack by a rebel militia on their town in western Myanmar.

Crowds had gathered on a small island to seek shelter after witnessing killings in the coastal town of Maungdaw, he said, but "many died on the spot", including one of his nephews, Noor Sadek.

Others crawled and swam to reach neighbouring Bangladesh, he said.

His family are among many Rohingya, members of a persecuted mostly Muslim minority, who fled Myanmar's Rakhine state in recent days, as fighting escalates between the troops of the ruling junta and the Arakan Army, the powerful ethnic militia that recruits from the Buddhist majority.

Reuters was not able to determine how many Rohingya had crossed into Bangladesh, where close to a million Rohingya live in refugee camps outside the coastal town of Cox's Bazar.

But medical charity Medicines Sans Frontères said its doctors had treated 54 people for violence-related injuries in recent days, 40 per cent of them women and children.

"We were seeing lots of gunshots, shrapnel, mortar shell injuries, all indicative of indiscriminate," Orla Murphy, the group's Bangladesh representative, told Reuters. "They were life-threatening trauma wounds that we were treating."

The influx of refugees, who will have to stay with relatives, stretching resources, will make food supplies scarce, said the representative of a panel of displaced Rohingya.

"They are suffering from an extreme food crisis," added Kamal Hossain, chairman of the panel. "The government and camp authorities should arrange their food."

Many dozens of Rohingya, including a heavily pregnant woman and her two-year-old daughter,