Another human trafficker killed in crossfire in Bangladesh

Another human trafficker was killed in a crossfire by police in southeastern Bangladesh district Cox's Bazaar bordering Myanmar on Sunday.

Deceased Zafar Alam, 37, was accused of at least four trafficking cases, said a police official from Cox's Bazaar district, some 391 southeast of capital Dhaka.

The official who did not like to be named said Cox's Bazaar police, acting on a tip-off regarding the presence of traffickers, on Sunday morning conducted a raid at a place where the culprits were preparing for trafficking some people to Malaysia illegally.

Sensing the law enforcers' presence, they opened fire, according to the official, adding that police retaliated with gunshots in self-defense that left Alam and two cops bullet-hit.

Alam succumbed to his injuries on way to hospital while the injured policemen are undergoing treatment at a hospital in the district, said the police official.

He said police also recovered a Lightning Gun and two rounds of bullets from the spot.

In last three days this is the second time when police crossed swords with Cox's Bazaar-based human traffickers who hit global media for brutality and barbarism with illegal migrants.

Also in Cox's Bazaar on Friday three alleged human traffickers were killed in a 'gunfight' with police.

The latest crackdown started as media reports regarding finding of mass graves of illegal migrants in Thailand aroused huge uproar also in Bangladesh.

A total of 92 out of 123 migrants were rescued from a jungle of Thailand's southern Songkhla province on Friday, who reportedly claimed themselves as Bangladesh nationals.

Thai police in separate drives rescued hundreds of foreign migrants from the clutches of the human traffickers during the last six months.

Authorities in Thailand recently found graves of suspected illegal migrants in the south of the country amid a deepening human trafficking scandal that has seen a deputy mayor arrested and about 50 police officers transferred from their posts.

Sources said there is a strong syndicate, comprising people from Bangladesh and neighboring Myanmar and Thailand, who have long been involved in trafficking people from the country.

Hundreds of illegal migrants every year either perish in the Bay of Bengal or fall into the hands of people-traffickers.

According to a report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released on May 8, some 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis boarded smugglers' boats on the Bay of Bengal between January and March of 2015, nearly doubling the number during the same time last year.

UNHCR staff spoke to hundreds of survivors of such journeys, and they estimated that 300 people died at sea in the first quarter of 2015 as a result of starvation, dehydration and abuse by boat crews, according to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric at Friday's daily briefing in the United Nations.