MORE than 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including 730 under the age of five, were killed in the first month of Myanmar’s military crackdown against the persecuted minority, international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) declared yesterday.

The figure is thought to fall far short of the actual number of people killed in the country’s northern Rakhine state between August and September and eclipses Myanmar’s official death toll of 400.

MSF medical director Sidney Wong called the findings “staggering,” both in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member dead due to violence and the horrific ways in which they were killed or severely injured.