More than 60 Rohingya Feared Drowned in Boat Capsize

Rohingya refugee children gather on a truck in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
Rohingya refugee children gather on a truck in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
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More than 60 Rohingya Feared Drowned in Boat Capsize

Rohingya refugee children gather on a truck in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
Rohingya refugee children gather on a truck in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

More than 60 people are believed dead after a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar capsized, the UN migration agency has said.

The refugees drowned in heavy seas off Bangladesh late on Thursday, part of a new surge of people fleeing a Myanmar army campaign and communal violence that the UN describes as "ethnic cleansing".

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called on countries to ban providing weapons to Myanmar over the violence, Reuters reported.

23 human bodies have been retrieved from the water so far, but the death toll is expected to exceed 60.

"Forty are missing and presumed drowned," IOM spokesman Joel Millman told reporters in Geneva.

Shona Miah, 32, told AFP; "My wife and two boys survived, but I lost my three daughters."

A dire shortage of clean water, toilets and sanitation is spreading disease and pushing the camps to the precipice of a health disaster, the Red Cross warned.

"Our mobile clinics are treating more people, especially children, who are very sick from diarrhoeal diseases which are a direct result of the terrible sanitation conditions," said Mozharul Huq, Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society.

In some of the camps hundreds of refugees are sharing a single toilet, said Martin Faller, of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

"The conditions for an outbreak of disease are all present – we have to act now and we have to act at scale," he added.

The World Health Organization has said one of the diseases it is particularly worried about is cholera.



Israel Launches Communications Satellite from Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifts off at Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center before the launch of Axiom Space Axiom Mission on June 25, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images/AFP
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifts off at Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center before the launch of Axiom Space Axiom Mission on June 25, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images/AFP
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Israel Launches Communications Satellite from Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifts off at Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center before the launch of Axiom Space Axiom Mission on June 25, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images/AFP
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifts off at Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center before the launch of Axiom Space Axiom Mission on June 25, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images/AFP

Israel on Sunday said it had launched a new national communications satellite on board a SpaceX rocket from the United States.

The Dror 1 satellite was blasted into orbit on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and the foreign ministry said.

"This $200 million 'smartphone in space' will power Israel's strategic and civilian communications for 15 years," the ministry wrote on X.

Accompanying video footage showed the reusable, two-stage rocket lift off into the night sky. SpaceX said the launch happened at 1:04 am in Florida (0504 GMT Sunday).

IAI, which called the launch "a historic leap for Israeli space technology", said when it announced the project to develop and build Dror 1 that it was "the most advanced communication satellite ever built in Israel".

In September 2016, an unmanned Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a test in Florida, destroying Israel's Amos-6 communications satellite, which was estimated to have cost between $200 and 300 million.