Myanmar says six Rohingya killed in attack were ‘with insurgents’

YANGON: The Myanmar army said yesterday that six Rohingya ki l led by helicopter gunf ire in restive Rakhine state were working with a rebel group, the latest escalation in violence that the UN says “may constitute war crimes”.

Ethnic and religious tensions divide western Rakhine state, where the army forced out some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims in 2017 in a brutal crackdown.

UN investigators have called for the prosecution of top generals for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Now the military is waging war against the Arakan Army (AA), which claims to represent ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and has killed 22 members of the army and police since early January.

The conflict has spread across the state, displacing more than 20,000 civilians of various ethnicities, according to UN figures.

The latest skirmish on Wednesday was in Buthidaung township, according to a report from the army chief’s website.

“While combatting AA terrorist insurgents ... six Bengali who were together with insurgents ... were killed and nine others injured,” the website reported yesterday, using a derogatory term for the Rohingya which falsely implies t hey a re newcomers from Bangladesh.

But an AA spokesman denied there was any fighting on April 3 between his group and the military, which “just shot randomly from two helicopters”.

“Some Bengalis who were cutting bamboo were killed and injured because of their shooting,” AA spokesman Khine Thu Kha told AFP. — AFP