300,000 Rohingya lack proper shelter: UN

More than 300,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have no adequate place to live in Bangladesh and are in need of emergency shelters, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says.

Tens of thousands of the Rohingya do not even have makeshift roofs over their heads and are camping in the open, exposed to monsoon winds and rain.

"We need to provide them with shelter immediately," said Mohammed Abdiker, the emergency operations chief of the UN organisation, in a Geneva.

The south Asian country has taken in more than 500,000 members of Myanmar's marginalised Muslim Rohingya minority since late August.

The exodus from Myanmar's Rakhine state started after militant Rohingyas attacked police and army posts, triggering a sweeping security operation that allegedly destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

Several thousand people are still crossing the border into Bangladesh each day, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a press conference.