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| Mobs of young Buddhist men on motorcycles roamed the streets of Lashio, Myanmar, on Wednesday, brandishing sticks and metal rods and throwing rocks. Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press |
BANGKOK — Security forces on Wednesday struggled to bring peace to a northern city in Myanmar after Buddhist mobs set fire to a mosque, a Muslim school and shops, the latest outbreak of religious violence in Myanmar and a sign that radical strains of Buddhism may be spreading to a wider area of the country.
The violence occurred in Lashio, near the border with China, which is hundreds of miles from towns and villages affected by religious violence earlier this year.
A correspondent for The Associated Press who reached Lashio on Wednesday reported that mobs of young men on motorcycles roamed the city brandishing sticks and metal rods and throwing rocks. One was wearing monk’s robes, The A.P. report said.
The burning of the mosque and other buildings took place on Tuesday evening and followed a pattern seen elsewhere in Myanmar of the police and military units being unwilling or unable to disperse angry crowds of Buddhists.
Lauri Nio, a student from Finland visiting Lashio, said the first police units arrived two hours after groups of men set fire to a mosque and began destroying shops. The police stayed for only a few minutes, he said, and when a larger contingent of police and military units returned later in the night, they closed off the streets but did not confront the rioters.
Groups of men gathered in the market ‘'shouting, cheering and singing Burmese nationalist songs'’ as they destroyed shops, he said.
Video footage from the city posted on Facebook on Wednesday by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Myanmar online news service, showed what now have become familiar scenes in Myanmar of burned-out buildings and charred motorcycles.
‘'We do not have information about casualties so far,'’ Ye Htut, a government spokesman, posted on his Facebook page.
Like a previous rampage in March in the central city of Meiktila, the violence in Lashio appeared to have been touched off by a relatively minor quarrel. State television said a Buddhist woman selling gasoline was attacked by a Muslim customer, who was later detained by the police. Buddhist mobs surrounded the police station where the man was being kept and reacted with fury when the police did not hand him over. Details of the quarrel could not be confirmed.
Mr. Ye Htut said the crowd that gathered outside the police station in Lashio included 80 Buddhist monks.
At least 44 people have died since March, when Buddhist mobs rampaged through Meiktila, violence that followed a dispute in a gold shop between a Muslim proprietor and Buddhist customers. Most of the victims in Meiktila were Muslims.
Mr. Yet Htut said the authorities and religious and civic organizations in Lashio were ‘'cooperating with each other to avoid further violence in the city.'’
Muslims make up about 5 percent of the population but their presence is visible in nearly every large town and city in the country. The violence of recent months has strained Myanmar’s relations with Muslim countries and has underlined questions about the ability of the Myanmar government, which is overwhelmingly staffed by Buddhists from the Burman ethnic group, to maintain long-term peace and stability among the country’s many other ethnic and religious groups.
Wai Moe contributed from Yangon.
