Thursday, 21 March 2013 11:20 AFP
Two people died and several mosques were destroyed in central Myanmar, police said Thursday, in the worst riots since Buddhist-Muslim clashes rocked western Rakhine state last year.
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| Several photographs such as this one have appeared on social media sites. Though their authenticity cannot yet be confirmed, recurring shots by different sources indicate that hundreds of Meikhtila Buddhists gathered to destroy Muslim houses and shops in the town on Wednesday. (PHOTO: Operation Eye Facebook) |
Around 200 people fought in the streets after an argument in a Muslim-owned gold shop turned violent in the town of Meiktila on Wednesday, according to a post on Myanmar Police Force's Facebook page.
The dead, who included a Buddhist monk, died after suffering severe burns, it said.
Police imposed a curfew overnight to control the situation after mobs set fire to several mosques.
"About three mosques were destroyed," a local police officer told AFP by telephone, but added that calm had since been restored.
"People are starting their normal day this morning," he said.
The unrest comes amid heightened tensions between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar, where communal conflict in Rakhine has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced since June 2012.
An initial report on the police Facebook page late Wednesday said anger spread after one man was injured during the row in the gold shop.
The report said a mob then descended on the area and destroyed some buildings.
It said six people were hospitalised, and that the Buddhist monk and a Muslim man later died from their injuries. A subsequent police report omitted the religion of the second man.
Myanmar's Muslims—largely of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent—account for an estimated four percent of the roughly 60 million population, although the country has not conducted a census in three decades.
Muslims entered Myanmar en masse for the first time as indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule, which ended in 1948.
But despite their long history, they have never fully been integrated into the country.
Pockets of sectarian unrest have occasionally broken out in the past across the country, with Rakhine state a flashpoint for tensions.
Since violence erupted in the region last year, thousands of Muslim Rohingya boatpeople—including a growing number of women and children—have fled the conflict in rickety boats, many heading for Malaysia.
Hundreds are feared to have drowned along the way.
The United Nations describes Rohingya as among the most persecuted minority groups in the world. Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.
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