About 200 homes and other buildings were destroyed by fire in recent weeks in an ethnic Rakhine village in Myanmar

News24xx.com -  About 200 homes and other buildings were destroyed by fire in recent weeks in an ethnic Rakhine village in Myanmar's western Rakhine state.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the latest in a series of brutalities allegedly committed by soldiers against civilians of different ethnic backgrounds.

"The burning of Let Kar village has all the hallmarks of Myanmar military arson on Rohingya villages in recent years," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW said in a statement on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, Myanmar's military was also forced to acknowledge that its troops abused ethnic Rakhine prisoners, after a video of soldiers battering blindfolded detainees spread on social media.

Myanmar's armed forces have been battling the Arakan Army (AA), a rebel group seeking greater autonomy for the western region, for more than a year. 

Clashes in Rakhine and neighbouring Chin states have escalated in recent weeks, leaving dozens dead and thousands displaced.

The imagery of Let Kar also bears a close resemblance to patterns of fires and widespread arson attacks by the Myanmar military on ethnic Rohingya villages in Rakhine State in 2012, 2016, and 2017, HRW said.

Satellite imagery recorded on May 16, 2020, at 10:30am showed no signs of damage in Let Kar, the group said.

But at 2:12pm, an environmental satellite detected extensive fires burning there. The HRW damage analysis of 200 buildings burned is most likely an underestimate because internal damage to buildings was not visible, it added.

The satellite imagery is consistent with witness accounts regarding the date and time of the fires and the number of buildings affected.

Residents in the neighbouring village of Bu Ywat Ma Nyo also reported similar attacks by Myanmar soldiers on the same day, with villagers reporting hearing gunfire and seeing flames and smoke.

An aid worker from the town of Mrauk-U told HRW that at about 2pm on May 16, columns of smoke could be seen coming from the direction of Let Kar, about 11km north of the town.