They killed our family as we fled homes to be alive

According to a UN estimate, the total number of Rohingya who have fled Myanmar since August 25 following a military crackdown, has crossed 415,000.

They are people who have no place to call home. For the thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar, it is a fight for survival in Bangladesh's squalid, crowded camps.

According to a UN estimate, the total number of Rohingya who have fled Myanmar since August 25 following a military crackdown, has crossed 415,000.

On a drive through the Teknaf-Cox's Bazar highway, you see a sea of refugees overflowing the streets. There is no space that is not occupied by them. Open swathes of land, muddy grounds, hilly areas, kerbs along the roads, mosques - they are everywhere. Homeless and hungry. Sleeping rough. Begging on the streets. Pleading for a packet of food.

Trucks carrying aid are lumbering their way through the muddy roads at regular intervals. At food distribution centres that are set up along the roads and at small make-shift camps, there is utter chaos. Hungry people pushing and jostling to claim their pack of supplies can be seen as volunteers wield sticks to control and manage the unruly crowd.

Most of the refugee camps are located off the Teknaf-Cox's Bazar highway, close to the border with Myanmar. Now dozens of makeshift camps have sprung up in areas like Kutupalong, Nayapara and Leda. The landscape is dotted with blue and orange tarpaulins roofs as far as the eye and zoom lenses can see. This is a tent city.

Under a yellow tarpaulin tent along the road, we see three small children - unaccompanied minor refugees. They tell us that both their parents were killed by the army. "They killed our father and mother. They killed everybody," said the older girl among them who is barely five years old.

The children said they escaped with people from their village. "We don't know where they are now. We cannot find them," said the girl.

A few metres across the road, hundreds of shanties made of tarpaulin are crammed next to each other. In one of the tents, two-year old Sadekha is holding an empty plate. He has been starving the whole day. Her brother Jairez sits beside her, also hungry and desperate for food.

Their father Abubaker Siddique is helpless. "We don't know what to do. I cannot watch my children go hungry. But how will I feed them?"

He said the family is surviving on cooked rice they received from a government aid distribution centre. "We are waiting for the next round of aid to come."

Heart-wrenching sights of hunger and disease are everywhere. At another makeshift camp in Kutupalong that Khaleej Times visited, the long winding line of refugees waiting for food, stretched to almost a kilometre

Jaffer Ali, a 75-year old Rohingya refugee does not even have the stamina to queue up for food. An asthma patient, he was carried by his relatives for 12 days through the Myanmar forests to cross over into Bangladesh.

"They (Myanmar army) would have killed me if I stayed. But now I don't know whether I will survive here in Bangladesh. I have not eaten for days."

They killed everybody

Ali Hussain who arrived in Bangladesh 20 days ago said he escaped with 14 of his family members and relatives. They share a shanty in one of the camps. He said two of his brothers and his uncle were killed by the army.

"They stormed into our house and asked us to leave in five minutes or get killed. We just ran out leaving behind everything. They killed my brothers and beat us while we were fleeing." Shubulla, another refugee said his entire village was set on fire by the army.

"They came in huge numbers and went about setting fire to our homes. There is hardly anything left for us to go back to," said Shabulla who said he is from a village called Bushidong.

"I walked for ten days with my other family members. We survived only on water."

Every family that Khaleej Times spoke to shared horrific tales of the Myanmar army's violence and brutality. Their men were shot dead. Women brutally raped and killed.

If the truth lies in the testimonies of these refugees, then the Myanmar army's systematic slaughter of Rohingyas' is a 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing' as the UN put it.

Rohingya graveyard

At Palongkhli that borders Myanmar and Bangladesh across the Naf river, villagers are still on the look-out across the flooded paddy fields and canals. Plumes of smoke can be seen billowing from across the hills bordering the Rakhine state where the Rohingya live.

In the past weeks, locals from Palongkhli had seen thousands of refugees crossing over to the Bangladesh border. The influx has stopped only during the last five days, saidvillagers.

"There were so many of them - men, women and children. They reached here in terrible condition. We gave food and shelter to many," said Mamoon, a fisherman.

Many did not even make it safely to Bangladesh. "We fished out the dead bodies of six people, including a woman," said Mamoon.

They are buried in a graveyard in the neighbourhood. Their misery is long over unlike the tens of thousands who made it across the border.

• World