The authorities in Bangladesh have begun the process of repatriating about seven thousand Muslim refugees to Burma.

The first group of forty-six refugees was accompanied across the border by Bangladeshi officials.

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, which is overseeing the operation, says the refugees are returning voluntarily.

Burma has agreed to take back seven-thousand of an estimated twenty-one-thousand refugees, known as Rohingyas, who fled to Bangladesh in the early 1990s.