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Opponents of the junta demonstrate in Yangon
Photo: SOCIAL MEDIA / via REUTERS
In the crisis country of Myanmar, soldiers from the military junta reportedly stormed a village and burned almost a dozen people alive.
Eyewitnesses now said that there were five young people among the victims.
The attack took place on Tuesday morning.
Pictures of the cremated corpses with their hands tied behind their backs could be seen on social networks. "My brother was a student and only 22 years old," a man from Don Taw in the north-west of the country told the German Press Agency. "When the soldiers came, he wanted to flee, but they caught and killed him."
About 100 soldiers stormed the village of Don Taw that morning and then tortured eleven citizens and then cruelly murdered them, said the spokesman for the "Government of National Unity," a group of former elected politicians who are now fighting underground against the military junta.
The youngest victim was 14 years old, the oldest 40, according to spokesman Dr.
Sasa.
"These acts represent war crimes of the highest order. They are simply acts of terrorism," it said in a statement.
Dr.
Sasa spoke of "hideous scenes" and an "escalation of acts of terrorism by the military".
The sheer brutality and cruelty of the act proves "that despite the apparent relative relaxation of the past few months, the junta never intended to de-escalate its campaign of violence."
Aung San Suu Kyi sentenced to prison
Myanmar has been plunging into chaos and violence since a military coup in early February.
The junta brutally suppresses any resistance and repeatedly attacks civilians. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and actual head of government, has been placed under house arrest.
It was only on Monday that Suu Kyi was sentenced to prison after months without charge for flimsy concerns.
According to the prisoners' aid organization AAPP, at least 1,300 people have been killed since the coup and around 10,000 more have been arrested.
mrc / dpa