More than 10,000 Rohingya have massed near a crossing point with Bangladesh, Myanmar media said Tuesday, as an exodus continues to swell with food supplies low and hostility towards them surging.

The ongoing flight, that has already seen over 500,000 Rohingya enter Bangladesh since last month, casts doubt on the practicality of a Myanmar proposal aired Monday to begin repatriation of the Muslim minority.

Rakhine state has been emptied of half of its Rohingya population in weeks, and more are on the move as insecurity presses them to leave villages which have so far been spared the worst of the communal violence to rip through the state.

Over “10,000 Muslims are arriving at the western grove between Letphwekya and Kwunthpin village to emigrate to the neighbouring country,” the state-backed Global new Light of Myanmar reported on Tuesday.

Myanmar's government refuses to recognise the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group, instead calling them “Muslims” or “Bengalis” — code for illegal migrants.

Authorities have tried to reassure fleeing Rohingya that they are now safe in Rakhine, the report added, but they want to leave “of their own accord.”

Villagers are running short on food, while fear in ethnic Rakhine-majority areas has been kindled by the violence and reports of death threats by their Buddhist neighbours.

“In some villages they are scared to pass by Rakhine villages,” said Chris Lewa, from Rohingya advocacy group the Arakan project, told AFP.

On occasions when the Rohingya village chief decides to leave, the whole hamlet will follow, emptying a village “in just a few hours.” On Monday, Myanmar's Minister of the Office of State Counselor, Kyaw Tint Swe, told Bangladesh his country was ready to return refugees subject to a verification process agreed in the early 1990s by the neighbours.

Under that agreement nearly a quarter of a million Rohingya were repatriated from Bangladesh to Myanmar between the early 1990s and 2005, he explained.

But refugees and rights groups say the verification process relies on documents most Rohingya do not have. The refugees also are also deeply fearful of what awaits back in Myanmar, with many recounting stories of rape, murder and arson.

Inside Rakhine, conditions are deteriorating for those left behind.

UN officials toured a conflict-hit portion of the state on Monday, noting the “unimaginable” scale of suffering. An EU delegation accompanying them on the government-steered day trip urged for an end to the violence after seeing “villages burned to the ground and emptied of inhabitants."

Bangladesh rescues 20 Rohingya held by refugee racket gang

Bangladesh police have rescued 20 Rohingya after busting a gang which ferried the refugees from Myanmar but demanded thousands of dollars for the boat ride, an official said on Tuesday.

The Rapid Action Battalion raided a village near the border with Myanmar late Monday to free the Rohingya Muslims who had been held there for a day, said Major Ruhul Amin.

The RAB chief who led the operation at Sabrung near Cox's Bazar told AFP the 20 included seven women, five men and eight children.

“They were held there by a gang of boat owners and crew who demanded 20,000 taka ($250) per person for a two-hour boat ride from Myanmar,” he said.

A boat ride between Maungdaw and Bangladesh's main landing station at Shah Porir Dwip would cost no more than five dollars normally.

Amin said they arrested three members of the gang for profiteering.

The UN estimates that 507,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine into Bangladesh since late August after the latest eruption of violence in the northern Myanmar state.

Many have arrived on rickety boats crossing the Naf river, which marks the border between Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district and Rakhine.

Police said boat owners, crew and fishermen have charged exorbitant prices for the rides.

“It has become a common phenomenon” since the influx began, Amin said.

Authorities have deployed mobile courts to crack down on the profiteering gangs and handed down sentences of up to six months' jail on nearly 200 people.

“We have arrested 20 brokers and freed nearly 2,000 people in raids in the coastal villages. In one raid we rescued about 1,000 Rohingya who were held at six houses,” Amin said.

Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh said the boatmen extracted every last penny from them for the ferry and threatened to throw them overboard if they refused to surrender valuables including gold ornaments Media reports have mentioned Rohingya being held by boatmen and agents for hours in coastal villages until they made inflated payments for the trip.

Rohingya living in established refugee camps in Bangladesh have also been accused of joining the profiteering.