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AT LEAST 150 civilians from Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority may have been killed this week in an artillery and drone attack in the western state of Rakhine carried out, survivors say, by a major force in the resistance to military rule.
The Arakan Army, the military wing of the state’s Rakhine ethnic group, denied responsibility for the attack last Monday on Rohingya trying to flee fierce fighting in Maungdaw town by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh.
A statement issued on Friday by medical charity Doctors Without Borders said that in the past week it has been treating increasing numbers of Rohingya people with violence-related injuries who managed to cross into Bangladesh.
The charity said some patients reported seeing people bombed while trying to find boats to cross the river into Bangladesh and escape the violence. Others described seeing hundreds of dead bodies on the river banks.
Both Rohingya activists and Myanmar’s military government have blamed the Arakan Army for the slaughter.
The attack, if confirmed, would be one of the deadliest involving civilians in the country’s civil war.
Gruesome videos circulating on social media purport to show dozens of bodies of adults and children strewn along a road near the riverside, but neither the video nor details of the attack can be easily verified due to tight restrictions on travel and ongoing fighting in the area.
Pro-democracy guerillas and ethnic minority armed forces have been attempting to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
morning star online