YANGON: Searchers on Monday found 17 more bodies in mass graves in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the government said, a day after the bodies of 28 Hindu villagers were exhumed in what the army says is evidence of a massacre by Rohingya militants.
Northern Rakhine has been ravaged by communal violence since Rohingya insurgents staged deadly raids on police posts on August 25, unleashing an army crackdown that has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The vast majority — more than 430,000 — are Rohingya Muslims who have fled across the border to Bangladesh from a military campaign which the UN says likely amounts to ethnic cleansing.
But tens of thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and the region’s small population of Hindus, have also bolted from their homes, saying they were attacked by Rohingya militants.
On Sunday the army said it had discovered two mud pits filled with 28 Hindu corpses — mostly women and children — outside the village of Ye Baw Kyaw in northern Rakhine.
The military blamed the killings on Rohingya “extremist terrorists”.
Seventeen more bodies were found on Monday, said government spokesman Zaw Htay.
Ni Maul, a Hindu leader who joined the search alongside soldiers and police, said the new corpses were of Hindu men aged between 30-50 and buried in two pits near the other grave sites.
“We are still searching together with soldiers and police as we believe more than 100 people were killed at that time,” he said.
Displaced Hindus from that area, known as Kha Maung Seik, have said that Rohingya fighters stormed into their communities on August 25, killing many and taking others into the forest.
They showed this agency a list of 102 people from two villages — Ye Baw Kyaw and Taung Ywar — who are feared dead by distraught relatives now sheltering in camps.
Several Hindu women were also abducted by the militants, according to the displaced Hindus, who wept as they recounted the bloodshed.
With the government blocking access to the conflict zone, it is difficult to verify the range of accusations that have intensified ethnic hatreds in Rakhine.
But the army has steadfastly blamed violence on the Rohingya while highlighting the suffering of other ethnic groups swept up in the violence.
The focal point of the unrest, northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw district, was once home to a fragile mosaic of religious communities, dominated by the Rohingya. — AFP
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