Some 370,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed to Bangladesh since violence in Rakhine state escalated last month.

Ms Suu Kyi is facing allegations from supporters in the West that she has failed to speak out over the violence.

Myanmar’s military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies reports that it is targeting civilians.

A government spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi, Zaw Htay, said “the state councillor will not attend” the General Assembly, where she spoke last year. He did not give further details.

Another spokesman, Aung Shin, told Reuters news agency that “perhaps” Ms Suu Kyi has “more pressing matters to deal with”, adding: “She’s never afraid of facing criticism or confronting problems.”

Ms Suu Kyi was due to participate in discussions at the General Assembly session in New York from 19 to 25 September.

In her first address to the General Assembly as national leader in September last year, Ms Suu Kyi defended her government’s efforts to resolve the crisis over the treatment of the Rohingya.

Myanmar’s envoy to the UN has blamed Rohingya insurgents for the violence in Rakhine state and said that Myanmar would never tolerate such atrocities.

But many of those who have fled say troops responded to attacks by Rohingya militants on 25 August with a brutal campaign of violence and village burnings aimed at driving them out.

On Tuesday, Myanmar denounced the suggestion by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, that its treatment of Rohingya Muslims amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.

The Rohingyas, a stateless mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

The UN Security Council is due to meet on Wednesday to discuss the crisis.

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Source: BBC

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One of them, a 15-year-old boy being treated in Bangladesh, lost both legs.

A woman at the same hospital said she had trodden on a landmine after she and her family were fired on. It’s unclear who laid the mines in either case.

More than 300,000 Rohingya have escaped Myanmar (Burma) in recent weeks. The army there denies targeting civilians.

On Sunday the human rights group Amnesty International accused the authorities of laying landmines at border crossings used by fleeing Rohingya.

A Myanmar military source told Reuters news agency that mines had been placed along the border in the 1990s and the army had since tried to remove them, but added that none had been planted in recent days.

The hospital visited by the BBC has seen an influx of people with landmine injuries, doctors say.

The 15-year-old boy, Azizu Haque, arrived with his legs destroyed. His brother, in another hospital, suffered the same fate, his mother says.

“Their injuries are so bad it’s as if they are dead,” she told the BBC. “It’s better that Allah [God] takes them, they are suffering so much.”

The injured woman, Sabequr Nahar, says she fled Myanmar because the military had been targeting her community, and she was crossing the border with her three sons when she stepped on a landmine.

“We’d been fired on, shot at, and they planted mines,” the 50-year-old said.

On Monday UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a “cruel military operation” was taking place, calling it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Rohingya who have fled Myanmar say villages have been burned and civilians attacked in a brutal campaign to drive them out.

The UN Security Council said it was looking to meet on Wednesday to discuss the violence after Sweden and Britain requested a closed-door meeting on the “deteriorating situation” in Rakhine state.

The Rohingya, a stateless mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

Bangladesh is already host to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled previous outbreaks of violence in Rakhine.

Existing refugee camps are full and the new arrivals are sleeping rough in whatever space they can find, reports say.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, is facing mounting criticism for failing to protect the Rohingya.

But the Rohingya are extremely unpopular inside Myanmar. On Sunday, police fired rubber bullets to break up a mob attacking the home of a Muslim butcher in Magway region in central Myanmar. One protester was quoted by AFP news agency saying it was a response to events in Rakhine.

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