(Reuters) – Myanmar security forces fired rifle grenades at protesters in a city near Yangon on Friday, killing more than 80 people, the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) and a local news agency said.
Details of the death toll in the city of Bago, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Yangon, were initially unavailable because security forces piled up bodies in the Zeyar Muni pagoda mass and cordoned off the area, according to witnesses and local media. .
The newspaper AAPP and Myanmar Now said on Saturday that 82 people were killed during the protest against the military coup on February 1 in the country. Fireworks began Friday before dawn and continued until noon, Myanmar Now said.
“It’s like genocide,” a protest organizer named Ye Htut was quoted as saying. “They shoot at every shadow.”
According to social media, many residents of the town fled.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s military junta could not be reached on Saturday.
AAPP, which maintains a daily version of protesters killed and arrested by security forces, earlier said 618 people had been killed since the coup.
The military has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once. The Electoral Commission rejected the allegation.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told a news conference in the capital Naypyitaw on Friday that the army had recorded 248 civilian deaths and 16 police deaths and said no security forces had used automatic weapons.
An alliance of ethnic armies in Myanmar opposed to the junta’s repression on Saturday attacked a police station in the east and at least ten policemen were killed, local media said.
The media attacked the police station in Naungmon in Shan State early in the morning by fighters from an alliance that includes the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.
Shan News said at least ten police officers were killed while the Shwe Phee Myay news office put the death toll at 14.
Myanmar’s military rulers said on Friday that protests against the government were diminishing because people wanted peace and that they would hold elections within two years.
Ousted lawmakers in Myanmar called on the United Nations Security Council on Friday to take action against the military.
“Our people are ready to pay any costs to regain their rights and freedoms,” said Zin Mar Aung, who has been appointed acting foreign minister for a group of legislators. She urged board members to apply direct and indirect pressure to the junta.
“Myanmar is on the brink of state failure, of state collapse,” Richard Horsey, a senior adviser to Myanmar at the International Crisis Group, told the informal UN meeting, the first public discussion of Myanmar by councilors .
Reporting by Reuters staff; Written by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Edited by Pravin Char