SHAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh (AP)
— Nabi Hussain owes his life to a yellow plastic oil container.
The 13-year-old Rohingya boy couldn’t swim, and had never even seen the sea before fleeing his village in Myanmar. But he clung to the empty container and struggled across the water with it for about 2 1/2 miles, all the way to Bangladesh.
Rohingya Muslims escaping the violence in their homeland of Myanmar are now so desperate that some are trying to swim to safety in neighboring Bangladesh. In just a week, more than three dozen boys and young men used cooking oil containers like life rafts to swim across the mouth of the Naf River and wash up ashore in Shah Porir Dwip, a fishing town and cattle trade spot.
“I was so scared of dying,” said Nabi, a lanky boy in a striped polo shirt and checkered dhoti. “I thought it was going to be my last day.”
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