Myanmar's border guard today buried nine officers killed in mysterious raids in the western state of Rakhine, as the military tightened control over a region long scarred by violence between Buddhists and Muslims.
Uniformed officers carried the wooden coffins draped with national flags through rain and thick mud before laying them to rest in a cemetery in the town of Maungdaw.
Troops have poured into the town and surrounding area close to the Bangladesh border since the three coordinated attacks on Sunday by what authorities have described as mobs armed with knives and homemade weapons.
Most people in the area are Muslim Rohingya, a stateless minority whom Buddhist nationalists vilify as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh - even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.
The unrest has fuelled fears of a repeat of 2012, when more than 100 people were killed in waves of sectarian violence that drove tens of thousands of Rohingya into displacement camps.
At least four people were killed in clashes with soldiers yesterday as troops hunted for the attackers, police said. Locals put the toll at seven and said they were unarmed residents.
"People are frustrated, people are under stress, people are hopeless here," one Rohingya resident from Maungdaw, who asked not be named for his safety, told AFP.
Residents have been hiding in their houses for fear of the troops patrolling the streets, he said, warning of impending food shortages.
"We cannot go from one village to another village," he said. "Because movement is restricted and people cannot go here and there and the market is virtually closed, (food) will be a big problem for us."
Authorities have sought to calm the situation, extending a regional curfew to between 7pm and 6am, and closing some 400 schools around the area for the next two weeks.
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has appealed for calm and several ministers and army top brass flew to Rakhine's capital Sittwe today to try to ease tensions in nearby displacement camps.
Rumours of killings and mass arrests around Maungdaw have spread like wildfire on social media, stoking fear, but details have proved difficult to confirm in the remote and tightly controlled area.
Today residents reported sporadic gunfire in some villages to the north of Maungdaw.
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