WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (IslamOnline) - Around 15-20 Rohingya Muslims have been killed in Moley Phara town of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), the International Islamic News Agency (IINA) reported Friday.

Eyewitnesses claim that a group of militant Buddhists came to the predominantly Muslim area and started a fight with locals.

They later torched a number of houses as deployed police remained as bystanders and did not intervene to quell the violence. Latest reports indicate that the Myanmar military, which came much later after the event, has established control over the situation. 

IINA reports, "Such acts have become the order of the day in the country, particularly in the Arakan region, where the authorities are said to be systematically trying to exterminate the Muslims by using all sorts of repressive and oppressive tactics.

"On many occasions they use monks to do their dirty work of incitement and in instilling anti-Muslim feelings."

Muslims constitute about 15% of the total population of Myanmar. Almost half of them live in Arakan province in the Northwest.

Ever since a military coup in 1962, Muslims have become a continuous target of successive repressive Myanmar/Burma regimes.

In 1978, over 300,000 Muslims were expelled from Myanmar and another 300,000 were expelled as a result of 1982 citizenship laws that officially declared Rohingya Muslims as non-nationals.

Most of these refugees currently live in squalid and crammed camps in Bangladesh

Source : http://www.islamonline.net/english/News/2001-02/10/article4.shtml