Muhammad Danial Amru Al-Haz Ali said the raging fire was just too strong. “I could not go back and help my friends who were crying for help,” said the 16-year-old.

When the fire first started, he said, their room quickly filled with smoke. They were the ones who noticed the fire first. Muhammad Danial was asleep when the fire started but woke up to see his friends frantically trying to find a way out.

He said he only managed to escape because his bed was located near a window. “My friends who were near the door were not so lucky as the fire spread quickly,” he said.

With a few others, Muhammad Danial managed to break open the window and grille to get out. “We then climbed down using the pipes to safety,” he said.

Azzarudin Roslan, who was among those who broke open the window grille, could not believe most of his friends perished in the fire. Still visibly shaken, he remembers hearing the distinct hiss of a gas leak before realising the fire was near the door of the dormitory. “Everyone was afraid and was rushing to find a way out,” said the 15-year-old.

Ustaz Mohd Arif Mawarty, 24, was asleep on the first floor when he heard a loud hissing sound coming from one of the rooms.

He said the noise was like a storm and he shouted for the other religious teachers staying on the floor to get out. Mohd Arif said the fire spread very fast and they didn’t have enough water to fight the blaze.

“I tried to reach the top floor but the flames were too big. We felt helpless. There was nothing we could do,” he said.

Mohd Arif added that he found it strange there were gas cylinders placed on the top floor of the school. “Usually it’s green gas cylinders used by the school but the ones placed on the top floor were yellow,” he said.

The 365-metre bridge runs from Nasak village in Paklai district, Xayaboury province, to Khokkhaodor village in Xanakham district, Vientiane province.

Head of the Public Works and Transport Department in Xayaboury province, Phengxoy Phengmeuang, told Vientiane Times on Thursday “The project is fully complete and the bridge is open for use.”

“Motorists can cross the bridge and vehicles can pass along it unimpeded,” he said.

An official handover ceremony will take place in October, the Director of the project told media recently.

The bridge is made of steel and is 8 metres wide with two traffic lanes.

The total cost of construction is about 189 billion kip, with the Netherlands government providing grant aid totalling 2.3 million Euros (over 20 billion kip) towards the project.

The government is funding the remainder of the construction cost.

This is the longest steel bridge in Laos, followed by the Thangon Bridge that crosses the Nam Ngum River in Vientiane.

Xayaboury is also linked to Luang Prabang province by a bridge that spans the Mekong between Thadeua village in Xayaboury and Pakkhone village in Luang Prabang. Another bridge crosses the Mekong at Pakbaeng, linking Xayaboury to Oudomxay.

This newest bridge will facilitate tourist travel from Loei province in Thailand to Vientiane via Road No. 4 in Xayaboury province and Road No. 11 on the left side of the Mekong.

Vientiane is 204km from the bridge, which is reached via Road No. 11.

It was an endless stream of Rohingyas crossing into Bangladesh from the strife-torn Rakhine State in Myanmar.

Some had lost all their loved ones while others were lucky enough to escape with their family members.

Crossing the Naf river, dozens of boats with 20 to 25 people each docked at Shah Porir Dwip round-the-clock. The new arrivals got down from boats and headed for the refugee camps in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar.

Tens of thousands of Rohingyas continue to pour into Bangladesh since August 25 when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base, prompting a military counter-offensive.

Yesterday, International Organisation for Migration Director (operations and emergency) Mohammed Abdiker Mohamud said 10,000 to 20,000 refugees are arriving every day, and if this trend continues, the number may reach a million by year end.

The number of newly arrived Rohingyas was about 400,000, he said.

“We are really getting concerned that the number will increase … Two weeks ago, we talked about 70,000 to 80,000. Yesterday, we talked about 379,000,” Mohamud said at a joint press conference organised by UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and the IOM at a hotel in the capital.

“Unless a political solution is found, there is a possibility that the entire Rohingya community may come to Bangladesh,” he said, according to an AFP report.

The number of refugees is going up so fast that the administration is struggling to ensure food and shelter for them.

Md Ali Hossain, deputy commissioner of Cox’s Bazar, said, “We are busy managing relief for Rohingyas.”

He further said 14 shelters were set up for them in the last 20 Days.

Mahmud Sharif, lessee of Hariakhali terminal on Shah Porir Dwip channel, said, “Rohingyas are arriving both day and night. But over the last two days, the flow of refugees seems to have increased.”

He said there were 57 boats at the terminal and almost all of those were busy ferrying Rohingyas from Myanmar.

Sabrang Union Parishad Chairman Noor Hossain said the flow of Rohingyas arriving through Shah Porir Dwip was a bit slow from Saturday to Tuesday, but it gained momentum again since Wednesday.

He estimated that around 25,000 Rohingyas arrived via Shah Porir Dwip alone in the last two days.

A number of newly arrived Rohingyas and local boatmen told this newspaper that 50,000 to 60,000 refugees were still waiting on the other side of the Naf river to enter Bangladesh.

With her 18-month-old daughter, Shahina, a Rohingya woman in her 20s, fled home in Garzania village of Rakhine State four days ago.

She finally reached Shah Porir Dwip yesterday morning after walking through hills and forests for four days.

She was on her way to Teknaf terminal from Shah Porir Dwip.

Shahina said she had lost almost all her family members. The Myanmar army took away her husband, and she lost her two sons while coming to Bangladesh from her village.

“I was captured by the Myanmar army. They have taken away everything I had. They asked me to go to Bangladesh,” said Shahina.

She was looking for her aunt and uncle who had reached Bangladesh three days ago.

With the help of his son, Habibur Rahman, a Rohingya farmer, was carrying his 90- year-old father who was too weak to walk.

“We left home nine days ago. But we could not travel to Bangladesh directly as we didn’t have the money to hire a boat to cross the Naf river.”

They hid in the jungle and sold the belongings they brought with them from home.

The 40-year-old farmer said they paid 7,000 Myanmarese Kyat (around Tk 420) each as boat fare.

From Shah Porir Dwip and bordering areas in Teknaf, plumes of smoke were seen on the Myanmar side of the border from noon till around 4:00pm.

Several newly arrived Rohingyas said the Myanmar army continued to set fire to Rohingya houses in villages along the Naf river.

Many locals were seen providing dry food, oral saline and cash to distressed Rohingyas on their arrival at Shah Porir Dwip.

Some were handing out money and arranging boats for Rohingya refugees.

MORE SUPPORT NEEDED

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner (operations) George Okoth-Obbo and IOM Director Mohamud, who visited Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday, lauded Bangladesh’s support for the Rohingya refugees.

They, however, voiced concern over the huge need for life-saving assistance for the large number of refugees.

“They are coming in large numbers — traumatised, injured, tired. And a lot of them are staying under the open sky,” Mohamud said yesterday.

The Rohingya refugees are in urgent need for food, water, medicine and shelter, he added.

Okoth-Obbo said, “There are people who have lost everything… children abandoned by the parents. They need protection.

“You could have a risk, for example health epidemic… it would be an emergency within an emergency,” he said.

In a statement yesterday, Unicef said the sheer number of refugees has overwhelmed pre-existing camps, with new arrivals seeking shelter anywhere they can find space.

“Conditions on the ground place children at high risk of water-born disease. We have a monumental task ahead of us to protect these extremely vulnerable children,” it said.

The UN agencies last week estimated the need for $77.1 million as immediate life-saving assistance for some 300,000 Rohingyas.

“As the numbers are rising every day, the figure has to be drastically revised,” said Okoth-Obbo.

“That is putting us under stress.”

Asked if the response from the international community is enough, he said assistance is coming in, but that is not enough yet.

“We urge the international community to step up their support.”

About the coordination between different agencies addressing the Rohingya crisis in Cox’s Bazar, he said the Bangladesh government is in the position of leadership.

“We are here just to support the government,” added Okoth-Obbo.

The 29-year-old widow lost her three sons, Muhammad Syafid Haikal, Muhammad Hafiz Iskandar and Muhammad Harris Ikhwan.

The ages of the three siblings have yet to be confirmed at press time.

Rosnani Mohd Nor, a cousin of Mashawani, told mStar she only discovered that her nephews were among the victims after their bodies were sent to Hospital Kuala Lumpur.

“Our family is grieving, especially the mother,” she said, adding that the boys’ father died eight years ago.

Rosnani, who was still in shock, came to Hospital Kuala Lumpur to be with Mashawani.

“I haven’t seen her yet. I hope she will stay strong through this trial,” she added.

Outside the mortuary of the hospital, Hamidah Mohamed Ibrahim cut a sorrowful figure.

The 63-year-old said she had lost a child she regarded as her own flesh and blood, just days after another loved one had died.

“He was too young. They were all too young. I know this is God’s will and I keep trying to remind myself of that.

“But it is difficult because this is really not an age to die. They had their whole lives ahead of them,” she sobbed. Hamidah lost her composure after she saw the first batch of bodies being taken into the forensic unit for DNA testing procedures.

Wiping her eyes with tissue paper, she lamented that it was too painful for her to bear.

“What will the parents be going through? No one should have to lose a child like this,” she said as she was led away by a friend.

The increasingly harsh global condemnation comes as the number of Rohingya who have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state for Bangladesh to escape ethnic unrest hit 389,000, and the United Nations warned of a looming “worst case scenario” with all of the Muslim minority group trying to leave.

The number of refugees was up 10,000 in just 24 hours, as the three-week old crisis deepens.

“We need to support Aung San Suu Kyi and her leadership but also be very clear and unequivocal to the military power sharing in that government that this is unacceptable,” Tillerson said Thursday of Myanmar’s first civilian leader in decades.

“This violence must stop. This persecution must stop. It has been characterised by many as ethnic cleansing. That must stop,” he said during a visit to London, speaking alongside British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Johnson also called on Myanmar’s de facto leader to use her “moral capital” to highlight the plight of the Rohingyas.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and long-time human rights champion, has been condemned for a lack of moral leadership and compassion in resolving the crisis.

She has no control over the powerful military, which ran the country for 50 years.

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said the mass displacement of Rohingya amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Amnesty International released fresh satellite images Friday of burned villages in Rakhine state, alleging Myanmar’s security forces have led “systematic” clearances of Rohingya Muslim settlements over the last three weeks.

At least 26 villages had been hit by arson attacks in the Rohingya-majority region, the rights group said, with patches of grey ash picked up in photos marking the spots where homes had once stood.

Backing up the pictures, Amnesty said fire sensors also deployed on satellites had detected 80 large-scale blazes across northern Rakhine state since August 25, when the army launched “clearance operations”.

“Rakhine state is on fire,” said Olof Blomqvist, a researcher with Amnesty International, in a “clear campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar security forces”.

The group quoted Rohingya witnesses who described security officers and vigilantes using petrol or shoulder-fired rocket launchers to set homes alight, before firing on villagers as they fled.

“It’s very difficult to conclude that it is anything other than a deliberate effort by the Myanmar military to drive Rohingya out of their own country by any means necessary,” Blomqvist added.

‘Worst case scenario’

Relief workers are struggling to contain the humanitarian disaster unfolding around the Bangladesh border town of Cox’s Bazar with 10,000-20,000 people crossing over each day — far more than the UN and other agencies had expected.

“We have to estimate the worst case scenario” where all Rohingya flee Rakhine, said Mohammed Abdiker Mohamud, a director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN’s migration agency.

“We cannot just put our heads in sand (and) say that everything will be OK,” he added.

“Unless a political solution is found there is a possibility that the entire Rohingya community may come to Bangladesh.”

There were previously an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya in Rakhine state, who have endured decades of persecution in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar.

At least 300,000 had fled to Bangladesh before the latest crackdown started on August 25, following attacks by Rohingya militants on police targets.

The exodus since has taken the overall figure of those who have quit Myanmar to at least 700,000.

Even before arriving to safety in Bangladesh, refugees who have trekked through jungles for days to reach the border are being targeted by profiteering boat operators who have hiked prices 200 times to cross the river separating Myanmar and Bangladesh.

An AFP correspondent at the Naf river said boat owners were charging refugees up to $100 for a 10-30 minute trip that would normally cost less than 50 cents.

“The boatmen threatened to throw us into the sea if we refused to give them our valuables,” said Nadera Banu, 19, who got married only last year but is already a widow.

“I gave up the final memento of my husband, a gold locket given on my wedding day, to escape.”

Bangladeshi magistrates operating mobile courts in Cox’s Bazar and nearby districts have now started sentencing boat owners and local villagers to terms of up to six months in prison, officials said Thursday.

Once in Bangladesh, refugees — with UNICEF saying 60 percent of new arrivals are children — are faced with desperate conditions in already overstretched camps around Cox’s Bazar. UN agencies have warned the country is struggling to cope.

“There are acute shortages of everything, most critically shelter, food and clean water,” UNICEF’s representative in Bangladesh Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.

“Conditions on the ground place children at risk of high risk of water-borne disease. We have a monumental task ahead of us to protect these extremely vulnerable children.”

Asean countries tend to view the centuries-long conflict in the context of religion. While non-Muslim majority countries, including neighbouring Thailand, stand firm on a non-interference principle, Muslim majority states tend to push for more pressure on Myanmar, although little action has materialised.

Countries might want to save face on the issue, because if they speak out loudly about the Rohingya issue, their own domestic humanitarian issues could be also be criticised, said Sunet Chutintharanon, dean of Chulalongkorn University’s graduate school, said at the seminar on Wednesday.

As a result, initiating action collectively under Asean would not only protect individual countries but also help to recognise the issue as humanitarian in nature, rather than religious or ethnic.

“This should be regarded as a universal issue. Assaults and cleansing operations are wrongful, regardless of religion,” he said. “Opening a regional platform should encourage safe cooperation for stakeholders.”

Naruemol Thapchumpol, director of Asian Research Center for Migration, said more of a spotlight should be placed on moderate groups and civil societies to help tone down the tensions at an individual level.

While even pro-democracy groups in Myanmar still refuse to mention the name “Rohingya”, their less hardline approach encourages dialogue, which could help promote peaceful methods of dealing with Rohingya people, Naruemol said.

Most groups in Myanmar refer to the minority as “Bengali”, a pejorative term that suggests they are not citizens of the country.

Authorities should also have their voices heard regarding the crisis, which each day gains greater prominence in the international spotlight, while remaining careful that Asean stakeholders do not lose face, which could have further ramifications, she said.

The panel, held at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, discussed the mass migration of Rohingya out of Rakhin state, as violence involving the Myanmar military and the insurgent Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has raged since August 25.

More than 1,00 people have been killed, according to a United Nations report, with more than 2,600 houses reported to have been burned down.

While the international community has slammed Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi for not taking sufficient action or even recognising the Rohingya ethnic group, Naruemol said her National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government had limited power to act.

“Suu Kyi’s government doesn’t have parliamentary supremacy and can do little to nothing on interior, defence and border control issues,” she said. “All the NLD has is civilian support in a Buddhist-dominated nation, where the anti-Muslim movement leader Ashin Wirathu has been influential.”

Rohingya have been regarded by generations of Myanmar governments as having inhabited Myanmar only since the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824, which by law renders them as non-citizens.

Doksuri is expected to make landfall in Vietnam midday Friday, packing heavy winds and rain.

Officials ordered an offshore fishing ban, while some 47,000 people in Ha Tinh province began leaving their homes Thursday, according to an official from the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority who declined to be named.

The storm is forecast to lash four central provinces with heavy rain and winds of up to 155 kilometres per hour (96 miles per hour), according to the Hong Kong Observatory.

Fishermen tie up their fishing boat anchored at a fishing port in the central province of Thua Thien Hue on September 14, 2017 as typhoon Doksuri is approaching the country’s central coast. // AFP PHOTO

Panicked residents fortified their homes and hauled boats in from the water on Thursday.

“We have prepared sandbags to put on the roof so when the storm arrives it won’t be blown off,” Nguyen Thi Que, a resident of Ha Tinh province, said on state-controlled news site Zing.

Further evacuations are expected in neighbouring Quang Binh, Nghe An and Quang Tri provinces.

“(We) have to evacuate people resolutely, even forcefully… to avoid any casualties when the storm arrives,” Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung said Thursday, according to footage on Zing.

Vietnam issued a category four “danger” warning, the second most severe of its five-tier warning system, as disaster management officials said it will be the worst storm to hit Vietnam in 10 years.

The government said it had 250,000 soldiers on standby along with a fleet of vehicles and boats at the ready.

Vietnam has already been hit by severe weather this year, with 140 people dead or missing in natural disasters since January, according to official figures.

Around 235 people were reported dead and missing last year due to flooding and bad weather in Vietnam. Authorities estimated the losses at $1.7 billion.

The Southeast Asian nation is routinely hit by tropical storms from around May to October, with its central coast most frequently affected.

The Straits Giant Panda Research and Exchange Center in southeastern China, where she has lived for 33 years, bid a heartfelt farewell to the bear, with a memorial service that featured Basi’s body surrounded by yellow flowers with the tip of her tongue sticking playfully out.

“With a heavy heart, we solemnly announce today that the original model of ‘Pan Pan’, the mascot for the first Asian Games (in China, 1990), and an angel of friendship both at home and abroad, giant panda star Basi died at 8:50am on September 13, 2017 at the age of 37,” the centre said.

White roses, arranged in the shape of a heart, also were laid in front of Basi’s favourite tree.

“She once brought us joy here, and we wish to leave the fragrance here for her,” Xiu Yunfang, deputy director of the facility in the city of Fuzhou, told state television.

Basi outlived most of her peers by nearly two decades — pandas in the wild have an average lifespan of about 20 years, but those in captivity generally live longer.

She died of old age, liver cirrhosis and kidney failure, said the centre, which also serves as a zoo known as Fuzhou Panda World.

Besides her longevity, Basi was beloved for her athletic feats, which became the inspiration for the 1990 Asian Games official mascot.

She could ride a bike, dunk a ball through a lowered basketball hoop, lift weights, and twirl a baton in her forepaws while balancing on a see-sawing wooden board.

– Saved from a river –

======================

Basi also wowed American crowds in 1987 while on six-month loan to the San Diego Zoo.

“Basi has left, but her beautiful image and Basi spirit will forever be in our hearts,” the panda centre’s director Chen Yucun said in a eulogy sent to AFP, describing her as “legendary”.

Basi became something of a celebrity in China over the years and has been photographed together with current first lady Peng Liyuan.

Her birthdays were often celebrated with gusto. For her 35th, the zoo erected a two-metre stone statue of her, and earlier this year she dug into a birthday cake while wearing a red crown.

“Such a big loss for the panda world. Thank you for the sweet memories,” said one user on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform.

Basi was rescued from the wild after falling into a river in southwestern China when she was around four and has lived at the Fuzhou facility ever since. She was named after the valley where she was found.

Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key factor — along with habitat loss — in their status as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

Basi also broke ground as the first panda to have cataract surgery and also the first diagnosed with hypertension.

Her body will be kept preserved for display in a planed “Basi Museum” at the zoo.

Last December, the world’s oldest captive male panda, “Pan Pan”, died in southwestern China at the age of 31.

He also was notable for having sired more than 130 descendants — one quarter of all the captive-bred pandas on the planet, officials said at the time.

Ma, entering the stage on the Harley, wore a gold-and-silver mask and military-style outfit at the Sept 8 party, CNBC reported.

After thrilling the crowd with a few splashy King of Pop’s moves and poses, Ma soon pulled off his prince’s mask to reveal he was behind the nifty footwork.

A group of Alibaba’s employees then joined him onstage, dancing and clapping to a medley of Jackson’s hits, CNBC said.

This is not the first time Ma has performed at an Alibaba event.

At a 2009 event, Ma had dressed up as heavy metal lead singer and performed Elton John’s Can You Feel The Love Tonight.

In a Chinese business environment dominated by buttoned-down bureaucrats, Ma, 53, certainly stands out with his flamboyance.

Like Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, Ma relishes outrageous publicity stunts, particularly when they involve dressing up, the Telegraph reported.

Ma is Asia’s richest person, according to Bloomberg in August.

Forbes gives the former English teacher’s net worth as US$38.5 billion (S$52.9 billion).

Ma’s Alibaba Group is one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses. Its revenue in the 12 months ending in March 2017 rose by 56 per cent to US$23 billion, according to Forbes.

Chinese netizens, entralled by Ma’s latest performance, praised him widely on the Internet.

“Papa Ma’s dance moves are fascinating,” says one netizen.//AFP

The firm claims that the “drive-thru” service is a first in Japan, where a rapidly ageing population means funerals are anything but a dying trade.

Elderly mourners can register their names on a touchscreen tablet device and make a traditional offering of incense just by rolling down a car window – a process relayed to screens inside the venue for the grieving funeral host to watch.

The initiative aims to speed up funeral services and also to give infirm relatives the chance to participate, said the firm’s president Masao Ogiwara.

“Older people may hesitate to attend a funeral because they have to ask for help to get out of the car,” he told AFP.

“But we want as many people as possible to be able to come to say farewell to their friends or neighbours,” he said.

It usually takes at least 15 minutes for someone in a wheelchair to offer incense at the altar during a traditional Japanese funeral ceremony.

Ogiwara said the time is cut down to just a few minutes by the service, which the Kankon Sosai Aichi Group in the central Nagano prefecture expects to offer from December.

‘Rent-a-monk’

With a high average life expectancy, Japan is on the verge of becoming the first “ultra-aged” country in the world, meaning that 28 per cent of people are aged 65 or above.

The latest government report shows that 27.3 per cent of a population of 127 million – one in four people – are aged 65 or older and the figure is expected to jump to 37.7 per cent in 2050.

Drive-through funerals are the latest in a series of Japanese innovations attempting to win a slice of the competitive 1.76-trillion-yen (S$21.6 billion) funeral business.

One trend that has sparked controversy is a so-called “rent-a-monk” system, where at the click of a mouse, a mourning family can order a monk delivered to perform the funeral rites.

Another company went even further by replacing a real Buddhist monk with a chatty human-shaped “Pepper” robot for a funeral.

How about a mail-order funeral? For those who cannot afford to pay expensive funeral fees, a temple near Tokyo accepts the ashes of the deceased via mail and places it in its burial facility.

If visiting a grave in a remote area is too much trouble, one firm has pioneered an app allowing relatives to pay a virtual visit to the gravesite.

And in urban areas where space is tight, several buildings have been constructed to house the ashes of hundreds of dead people.

Mourners are given a card which they place on an electronic sensor, whizzing the right ashes automatically to an altar for prayer.//AFP