On Wednesday hundreds of rampaging Buddhists armed with bricks stormed a clutch of Muslim villages in Okkan, just 100 kilometers north of Myanmar's main city, Yangon, leaving 10 people injured and one dead.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called on Myanmar’s government to cooperate with the Islamic Organization Cooperation in order to prevent violence against Muslims.
According to AP, police have so far detained 18 attackers who destroyed 157 homes and shops and at least two mosques in Okkan and three outlying villages.
The latest wave of sectarian violence erupted in March in the central town of Meikhtila, causing 44 deaths and displacing an estimated 13,000 people, most of them Muslims.
Sectarian clashes between Buddhists and Muslims, who make up about 5 percent of the nation’s roughly 60 million people, have erupted on several occasions.
The most serious attacks took place in Rakhine State in the west in June and October last year, when Buddhists fought against Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship by Myanmar and seen by many in the country as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. At least 192 people were killed.
MT/PA
MNA
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MNA
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