‘We just ran’: Rakhine conflict flares

BUTHIDAUNG, Myanmar: As bullets smashed into the walls, the residents of Alecheung village jolted from their sleep and fled leaving everything behind -- civilian victims of a crackdown by Myanmar’s army on ethnic Rakhine militants in an area already concussed by violence.

"I just ran... I didn’t even have time to take my phone," Zaw Win, 22, told AFP on Friday from a makeshift camp in the grounds of a pagoda, a few kilometres from his village in restive Buthidaung district.

Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, is a cauldron of religious and ethnic hatreds. In 2017 720,000 Rohingya Muslims were expelled in a bloody army crackdown. United Nations investigators say that operation merits prosecution for genocide.

Now the majority ethnic Rakhine -- who are Buddhist and who helped drive out the Rohingya -- are in conflict with the same army they supported against their Muslim neighbours just 18 months ago.

On January 4 the Arakan Army (AA), a militant group espousing greater rights and autonomy for the Rakhine, killed 13 in raids on police border posts, prompting an army kickback. The army says 13 AA militants have been killed in reprisals so far, while the UN says at least 5,200 people have been displaced by violence.

An accurate death toll -- including any civilian casualties -- is impossible to gauge in a zone in a near-blanket lockdown. AFP reporters joined the first government-steered media visit to Buthidaung, one of the areas of restive northern Rakhine worst hit by the fresh violence.

The displaced from Alechaung, a village for ethnic Mro -- a small, mainly Buddhist minority -- fled two weeks ago. "We ran for our lives," said Noe Zin Tun, 23, a primary school teacher, adding she still feels desperately insecure despite the shelter within the pagoda walls.

"We have heard gunfire from here as well. Fear is on my mind all the time," she added. Around 260 Mro were at the pagoda on Friday, many huddled round a huge rice cooker, wrapped in blankets.

"The fighting wasn’t far from us. Our school was even hit by bullets," Kyaw Kyaw Naing, 24, said. Rohingya also still live in Buthidaung, marooned between hostile neighbours and the warring parties.