ICC to seek arrest warrant for Myanmar's leader

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor Karim Khan said he would seek an arrest warrant for Myanmar's military leader, for crimes against humanity in the alleged persecution of the country's Rohingya minority.

"My office has concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Senior General and acting President Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Myanmar Defense Services, bears criminal responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya committed in Myanmar and in part of Bangladesh between 25 August 2017 and 31 December 2017."

A million Rohingya fled to escape a Myanmar military offensive launched in August 2017.

It's a military campaign UN investigators described as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Soldiers, police, and Buddhist villagers are alleged by UN investigators to have razed hundreds of villages in the remote western Rakhine state, torturing residents, carrying out mass-killings and gang-rapes.

Myanmar has denied the allegations.

More than a million Rohingya refugees now live in squalor in camps in Bangladesh.

A panel of three judges will now decide if they agree there are "reasonable grounds" to believe general Min Aung Hlaing bears criminal responsibility for the deportation and persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

A spokesperson for Myanmar's ruling junta did not answer calls seeking comment from the military government immediately after the announcement.

The prosecutor's office said in a statement that it was seeking the warrant after extensive, independent and impartial investigations. More applications for arrest warrants will follow, it said.

More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh during the campaign which UN investigators said was carried out with genocidal intent.