Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing, the UN human rights office stated on Friday.
"The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths," stated the report from the United Nations human rights office, referring the military crackdown launched on October 10 in the wake of a deadly attack on military post.
Witnesses had testified to "the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and s3xual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food", the report stated.
The report based on interviews with 204 Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh recounted gruesome violations allegedly perpetrated by members of Myanmar's security services or civilian fighters working alongside the military and police.
"An eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers," the rights office stated in a press release, citing witness accounts.
The UN also stated it had reports of three children aged six or younger being "slaughtered with knives".
"What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk," UN rights chief Zeid bin Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein stated in the statement.
'Devastating cruelty '
"What kind of 'clearance operation' is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?", he also stated.
"The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable."
The Rohingya numbering some 1.1 million are loathed by many among Myanmar's Buddhist majority and live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state.
Yangon refuses to recognise the Rohingya as one of the country's ethnic minorities, instead describing them as Bengalisor illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesheven though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.
Yangon's own probe into the unrest denied that the security forces had carried out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.
Myanmar's government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has stated the allegations are invented and has resisted mounting international pressure to protect the minority.
But Zeid, who has previously urged Yangon to act, hit back again on Friday demanding that impunity for such serious crimes had to stop.
"The Government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred," he stated.
Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military launched a security operation in response to attacks on police border posts on October 9, the UN report stated. The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at 69,000.
The UN report was issued in Geneva after the investigators gathered testimony last month from Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the "lockdown area" in Maungdaw in Rakhine for the Cox's Bazar district in Bangladesh.
Aljazeera