`IT'S A MASSACRE,' MYANMAR PROTESTER SAYS.
38 KILLED, UN SAYS
Police and soldiers in Myanmar opened fire with little warning, witnesses said, killing 38 people in the most violent day since protests against last month's military coup began.
The bloodshed occurred one day after neighbouring countries had called for restraint in the aftermath of the military's overthrow of the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
“It's horrific, it's a massacre. No words can describe the situation and our feelings,” youth activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi told Reuters via a messaging app.
The dead included four children, an aid agency said. Hundreds of protesters were arrested, local media reported.
“Today it was the bloodiest day since the coup happened on the 1st of February. We had today — only today — 38 people died. We have now more than over 50 people died since the coup started, and many are wounded,” United Nations special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, said in New York.
A spokesman for the ruling military council did not answer calls seeking comment.
Ko Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners rights group, had said earlier the military killed at least 18. But the toll rose by the end of the day.
In the main city Yangon, witnesses said at least eight people were killed, one early Wednesday and seven others when security forces opened sustained fire in a neighbourhood in the north of the city in the early evening.
“I heard so much continuous firing. I lay down on the ground, they shot a lot,” protester Kaung Pyae Sone Tun, 23, told Reuters.
A protest leader in the community, Htut Paing, said the hospital there had told him seven people had been killed. Hospital administrators were not available for comment.
After nightfall, Yangon residents lit candles and held prayers for the dead.
In the central town of Monywa, six people were killed, the Monywa Gazette reported. Others were killed in the second-biggest city Mandalay, the northern town of Hpakant and the central town of Myingyan.
Save the Children said four children were among the dead, including a 14-yearold boy who Radio Free Asia reported was shot dead by a soldier on a passing convoy of military trucks.
The violence took place a day after foreign ministers from southeast Asian neighbours urged restraint but failed to unite behind a call for the release of Suu Kyi and the restoration of democracy.