Ukhia : The lost Rohingya boy made the journey from Myanmar alone, following strangers from other villages across rivers and jungle until they reached Bangladesh, where he had no family and no idea where to go.
"Some women in the group asked, 'Where are your parents?' I said I didn’t know where they were," said Abdul Aziz, a 10-year-old whose name has been changed to protect his identity.
"A woman said, 'We’ll look after you like our own child, come along'. After that I went with them."
More than 1,100 Rohingya children fleeing violence in western Myanmar have arrived alone in Bangladesh since August 25, according to the latest UNICEF figures.
These solo children are at risk of sexual abuse, human trafficking and psychological trauma, the UN children's agency said.
Many have seen family members brutally killed in village massacres in Rakhine state, where the Myanmar army and Buddhist mobs have been accused of crimes described by the UN rights chief as "ethnic cleansing".
Others narrowly escaped with their own lives -- some children arriving in Bangladesh bear shrapnel and bullet wounds.
The number of children who crossed into Bangladesh alone, or were split up from family along the way is expected to climb as more cases are discovered.
More than half of the 370,000 Rohingya Muslims who have made it to Bangladesh since August 25 are minors, according to UN estimates.
A sample of 128,000 new arrivals conducted in early September across five different camps, found 60 percent were children, including 12,000 under one year of age.
This presents a needle in a haystack scenario for child protection officers trying to find unaccompanied minors in sprawling refugee camps, where toddlers roam naked, children sleep outdoors and infants play alone in filthy water.
"This is a big concern. These children need extra support and help being reunited with family members," Save the Children’s humanitarian expert George Graham said in a statement.
