Alwaght- Thousands of Myanmar Rohingya Muslims have been killed as an apparent genocide unfolds in the Southeast Asian Buddhist state.
The country's military commander said 399 Muslims have been killed in clashes with security forces since last Friday while confirming that nearly 30 troops have been killed. This official figure is a sharp increase from the previous one of 100.
According to Arkan News Agency, the clashes started last Friday after the army and border guards raided the villages of Rohingyas and locals reported about hearing successive explosions and gunfire. The report added that Rohingya Muslims defended themselves in response to the ongoing aggression
The European Rohingya Council announced this week that between 2,000 and 3,000 Muslims were killed in Myanmar's Rakhine state within a period of three days from Friday to Sunday.
Council spokeswoman Anita Schug said thousands other had been injured in what she described as a "slow-burning genocide".
"It [the situation in Rakhine] is an ongoing slow-burning genocide," Schug said, accusing Myanmar's military of being behind the deaths.
She said almost a thousand Muslims were killed on Sunday in Saugpara village, Rathedaung alone.
More than a 100,000 civilians have been displaced in Rakhine, while another 2,000 Muslims are trapped on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border which was closed by the Bangladeshi government, Schug added.
She also said a hundred villagers from Auk Nan Yar were taken to an unknown location on Wednesday, adding there were concerns for their safety.
A security clampdown launched in October last year in Maungdaw, where Rohingya form the majority, led to a UN report on human rights violations by security forces that indicated crimes against humanity.
The UN documented mass gang rape, killings, including that of babies and children, brutal beatings and disappearances. Rohingya representatives have said approximately 400 people were slain during the operation.
The Rohingya are the world's largest stateless community and of one of its most persecuted minorities.
Rakhine State in west Myanmar has seen the most serious violence perpetrated against Muslims in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. Reports indicate that thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced there in attacks by regime forces and extremists Buddhists since in 2012 in a deliberate state-backed policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
