YANGON: Searchers on Monday found 17 more Hindu bodies in mass graves in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the government said, a day after 28 corpses were exhumed in what the army says is evidence of a massacre by Muslim Rohingya militants.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and the region’s small population of Hindus, have also bolted from their homes, saying they were attacked by Rohingya militants.

On Sunday the army said it had discovered two mud pits filled with 28 Hindu corpses — mostly women and children — outside the village of Ye Baw Kyaw in northern Rakhine.

Seventeen more bodies were found on Monday, said government spokesman Zaw Htay, blaming the killings on Rohingya militants.

Photos posted by the government’s Information Committee showed two rows of decomposed bodies laid out across a patch of grass.

Ni Maul, a Hindu leader who joined the search alongside soldiers and police, said the new corpses were of Hindu men aged between 30 and 50 and buried in two pits near the other grave sites.

“We are still searching together with soldiers and police as we believe more than 100 people were killed at that time,” he said.

Displaced Hindus from that area, known as Kha Maung Seik, have told AFP that Rohingya fighters stormed their communities on Aug 25, killing many and taking others into the forest.

They showed AFP a list of 102 people from two villages — Ye Baw Kyaw, where the bodies were found, and Taung Ywar — who are feared dead by relatives now sheltering in camps.

Several Hindu women were also abducted by the militants, according to the displaced Hindus, who wept as they recounted the bloodshed.

With the government blocking access to the conflict zone, it is difficult to verify the range of accusations that have intensified ethnic hatreds in Rakhine.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2017