Arakan News Agency
The government and regional sources said suspected insurgents had killed at least six members of a Buddhist minority in western Myanmar amid escalating violence in the troubled state of Arakan.
The office of Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi said security forces had found the bodies of three men and three women with gunshot wounds and various bodily cuts in the Mayo mountain range near Maungdaw town. They said in a statement that “extremists” were responsible for the killing of the six individuals in the village Mayo region.
A resident said security forces opened fire on villagers armed with sticks around the village of Ko Nun Yar on Friday.
Four non-Muslim villagers were lost in the area last week, and the bodies of three Muslims were found mutilated on Monday.
Violence erupted in northern Arakan, a predominantly Muslim province, last October, when unidentified assailants killed nine policemen in attacks on border guard posts.
The military later launched a military operation and they were accused of indiscriminately shooting villagers, raping women from the Rohingya minority and burning their houses.
UN investigators interviewed some of the approximately 75,000 people who fled to neighboring Bangladesh that the Myanmar forces may have committed crimes against humanity.
Suu Kyi refuses to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission set up to investigate abuses in Arakan and elsewhere.
