As many as 15,000 people have fled across Myanmar's border into China in the past month as fighting between the army and armed ethnic groups intensifies, Al Jazeera reported on 20 December quoting the UN.
Aid access to people affected by conflict in the northern states of Kachin and Shan "is getting worse, not better", Pierre Peron, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar, told Al Jazeera by email.
The OCHA said in an update on Monday that, as well as the estimated 15,000 new refugees, another 2,400 people have been displaced internally in the northern part of Shan state since November 20, when a coalition of four rebel armies, the Northern Alliance – Burma, attacked military and police outposts.