The U N children's agency is estimating that 240,000 children have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state into neighboring Bangladesh over the last three weeks, reports UNB. UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado says that figure - amounting to about 60 per cent of the estimated 391,000 total refugees - includes about 36,000 children aged under 1 year old. She says the agency also estimates 52,000 pregnant and lactating women. Mercado says that includes an estimated 1,100 unaccompanied minors who had crossed over the past week.

She spoke at a regular briefing in Geneva yesterday that included comments from many U.N. agencies that were addressing the crisis in Bangladesh.

Mercado says: "As everybody here is going to tell you, the needs are seemingly endless and the suffering is deepening."

Chris Lom, Asia-Pacific spokesman for the U N's International Organization for Migration, said by phone in the briefing that the figures amounted to rough estimates, adding "there's not somebody with a clipboard registering them" as the people cross the border.

Earlier, the UNICEF said over 2 lakh Rohingya children are now at risk in Bangladesh. "This is a growing humanitarian crisis and children are at the heart of this crisis. Some 60 per cent of all refugees are children according to preliminary data," said Jean Lieby, Chief Child Protection, UNICEF Bangladesh on Tuesday.

The UNICEF official said they are facing an unprecedented influx of Rohingya refugees who are coming from Myanmar and crossing into Bangladesh. "The scale and the speed of this influx is unprecedented in Bangladesh. Just to give you an idea: 220,000 people entered Bangladesh in only six days - between 4 and 10 September. We have no indication that this influx will stop soon," reads a briefing note UNB received from Geneva.

"The first thing you see here in the different Rohingya camps is the large number of children. You see children who have not slept for days, they are weak and hungry," said the official.