This week thousands of new Rohingya Muslim refugees crossed the border into neighbouring Bangladesh, fleeing hunger and a campaign of attacks by Myanmar security forces and Buddhist mobs that the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing.

Exhausted, hungry and destitute, they join more than 600,000 who earlier fled what the military has called "clearance operations" in Rohingya villages after the Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants.

They have crossed land borders, rivers and treacherous seas to seek refuge in crowded camps in Bangladesh, itself a poor country struggling, along with international aid agencies, to cope with the influx.

Refugees tune in to WhatsApp radio

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh

In his hillside grocery shop in a Bangladesh refugee camp, Rohingya Muslim Momtaz-ul-Hoque takes a break to listen to an audio recording on his mobile phone, while children and passers-by gather round to hear the latest news from Myanmar.

"I listen because I get some information on my motherland," said Hoque, 30, as he plays a message on WhatsApp explaining theMyanmar government's proposals for repatriating refugees.

Hoque has been in Bangladesh since an earlier bout of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state in 1992, but the number of refugees in the camps has swelled dramatically to more than 800,000 in recent weeks, after a massive Myanmar military operation sent around 600,000 people fleeing across the border.

Tens of thousands of exhausted refugees have arrived with little more than a sack of rice, a few pots and pans and a mobile phone powered by a cheap solar battery, and many are desperate for news of what is going on back home.

With few news sources in their own language and low levels of literacy, audio and video messages distributed on apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube have become a community radio of sorts for the Muslim minority.

Dozens of WhatsApp groups have sprung up to fill the information gap. Their offerings range from grainy footage of violence, to listings of the names and numbers of people missing in the chaos of the exodus, or even an explainer from educatedRohingya on how to adjust to life in the camps.

Out of breath, a man narrated a scene purportedly from a village in Myanmar's Buthidaung region, according to Mohammed Zubair, a refugee who translated the broadcasts for Reuters. "They are surrounding the village. We are under attack from the military and the mogs...Some people are seriously injured," Zubair translates the speaker as saying, using a derogatory term common in Bangladesh to refer to ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

"I trust it 100 per cent," Zubair said of the information. Reuters was not able to verify the account. The WhatsApp groups tend to have hundreds of members,meaning

that the spread of information depends on people passingon the news.

Crisis 'spinning out of control'

LONDON

A combination of escalating violence, worsening health and poor access to conflict zones in Myanmar's Rakhine state is fueling a humanitarian crisis that is "spinning out of control", senior aid officials said. "We've seen a massive increase in violence not just between armed actors but also civilians, which is tearing families apart and leaving people to feel completely abandoned and disenfranchised," Peter Maurer, president of the InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the Thomson ReutersFoundation.

The United Nations says killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. “I worry that this continued context of fear and violence is spinning out of control and will only lead to displacement of more people," Maurer said. Myanmar has blocked humanitarian agencies apart from Red Cross organisations from accessing the northern part of Rakhine state in western Myanmar, where the conflict worsened at the end of August.

The humanitarian crisis is compounded by a worsening health situation, experts say. Nipin Gangadharan, Bangladesh country director at aid organisation Action Against Hunger, said refugees arriving inBangladesh were "taking a longer time to get here because of the constant violence, so their health is deteriorating significantly."

"We're seeing rising levels of malnutrition, particularly among children, and people who survive on one meal a day," he said, adding: "There's no end in sight to the conflict, so us humanitarianactors are in it for the long run.”