Updated 26 August 2013, 7:26 AEST
A man walks near burnt houses at Htan Kone village in Myanmar's northern Sagaing region (Credit: Reuters)
About 1,000 anti-Muslim rioters burned shops and homes in a fresh outbreak of communal unrest in Myanmar, officials said.
Police
fired warning shots on three occasions as a mob tried to set property
ablaze and attacked fire engines that were attempting to put out fires
in a village at Kanbalu, in the central region of Sagaing.
"The
local security forces stepped in to stop a group of approximately 1,000
people as they tried to torch a house. But the crowd kept shooting with
slingshots and the situation became uncontrollable," a statement on the
Ministry of Information website said.
The unrest was said to have
erupted after a Muslim man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to
rape a Buddhist woman on Saturday evening.
A crowd of about 150
people and three Buddhist monks gathered at the police station demanding
that the accused be handed over to them.
When the authorities
refused, the mob attacked Muslim property in the area and the crowd grew
in size and ferocity as the night went on.
Attacks against
Muslims - who make up at least four per cent of the population - have
exposed deep rifts in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, casting a shadow over
widely praised political reforms since military rule ended in 2011.
Growing unrest
Map: Kanbalu, Myanmar
The latest violence is the first anti-Muslim incident reported in Sagaing amid signs that the unrest is continuing to widen.
It
began in the far west of Myanmar last year and has erupted in areas
across the country since bloody riots in the central town of Meiktila
killed dozens in March.
Last week watchdog Physicians for Human
Rights said Myanmar risked "catastrophic" levels of conflict with
"potential crimes against humanity and/or genocide" if authorities
failed to stem anti-Muslim hate speech and a culture of impunity around
the clashes.
Rights groups have accused authorities of being
unable or unwilling to contain the unrest, which has left about 250
people dead and more than 140,000 homeless. Myanmar has rejected the
claims.
Many of the incidents have featured retaliatory violence
against Muslim communities in response to accusations of seemingly
isolated criminal acts.
AFP
AFP
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