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11/22/2024 06:03:16 am

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Buddhist-Muslim Clashes Lead to Curfew in Myanmar

Buddhist-Muslim unrest

(Photo : REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun) Vehicles pass a policeman standing on guard in Mandalay July 4, 2014. Hundreds of Buddhists threatened to kill Muslims as they rode on motorcycles through Myanmar's second-largest city, raising the prospect of further communal violence after two people died in unrest earlier in the week.

New violence erupted Saturday in Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city, even after authorities have started imposing a curfew following several nights of clashes between Muslims and Buddhists.

Witnesses said a mob of Buddhists went on a rampage and torched a school and dormitory within the Muslim area of a cemetery in the outskirts of the city.

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The rampage occurred after the funeral of a Buddhist victim who was killed during one of the nightly clashes since Tuesday.

No children were believed to be in the school at the time of the attack, and no one has been reported injured due to the mob attack.

Muslims in the area accused police of standing by while the attack was going on, but an official of the regional police force said they did not expect the funeral would lead to a violent attack, and did not provide  extra security.

Two people have been killed in about eight separate clashes since Tuesday night, when a mob attacked a tea shop owned by a Muslim accused of raping a Buddhist woman.

The state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported that gangs of as many as 450 people have been involved in the clashes, many of them armed with knives and firearms.

The regional police said nine people have been arrested since Tuesday night, five of them Muslim and four Buddhist.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, with Muslims accounting for about 5% of the population.

Since 2012, hundreds of people have been killed and close to 150,000 have lost their homes since religious unrest broke out in in the western state of Rakhine, with the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority bearing the brunt of the violence. Several incidents of anti-Muslim violence have occurred elsewhere in the country.

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