Fires ravage eight villages in northwest Myanmar

Yangon: Up to eight villages were burned down in a part of northwest Myanmar where large numbers of Muslim Rohingya had been sheltering from a wave of violence engulfing the area, a witness and three sources briefed on the matter said.

The fires were blazing in the ethnically mixed Rathedaung township, where populations of Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists live side by side.

“Today around 4pm, I saw the smoke coming from where the villages were burning ... I saw it from the Chin village where I am staying now,” said a villager from the area contacted by phone.

It was unclear who set fire to the villages on Friday.

Independent journalists are not allowed into the area, where Myanmar says its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against “extremist terrorists”.

Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine vigilantes have unleashed a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population.

The burning of more villages is likely to fuel an exodus of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Rathedaung, the site of the latest fires, is the furthest Rohingyain-habited area from the border with Bangladesh.

The blazes were confirmed by sources, including two monitors with a network of informants on the ground, and a local journalist based in the nearby town of Buthidaung.

One of the sources said 300 to 400 Rohingya, who had escaped other burnings, had been sheltering at the hamlet of Ah Htet Nan Yar until the day before the fire broke out.

They had escaped before it started, the source said, quoting an eyewitness. — Reuters