OVER 60 people are feared dead as a boat carrying Rohingya refugees to safety in Bangladesh capsized on Thursday, the UN migration agency said yesterday.

The tragedy struck as the UN security council was debating the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the army has been burning villages, summarily executing residents and gang-raping women in what fleeing Rohingya say is an ethnic cleansing exercise.

Bangladeshi ambassador Masud Bin Momen told the council that violence in Rakhine had not stopped, despite government claims to the contrary.