Rohingya militant group warns of 'war' against Myanmar government; thousands flee clashes

On Friday, militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which claims to be fighting for the rights of Rohingya people — a Muslim minority long-persecuted by Myanmar's Buddhist majority — attacked about 25 police posts in the country's west.

A new video posted on social media showed the group's leader Abu Ammar Jununi flanked by two masked men with assault rifles and saying the recent violence was in response to harassment from Myanmar's security forces and blockades of Rohingya villages. He called on international aid groups to stay and help, but the United Nations is evacuating all non-essential staff for the region.

The plight of Myanmar's Rohingya refugees, a Muslim ethnic minority group rendered stateless in their homeland and detained in transit nations, is desperately bleak.

On Monday, Myanmar security forces reportedly intensified operations against the Rohingya insurgents, according to local authorities, in what is being treated as the worst violence involving Myanmar's Muslim minority in five years.

The fighting has killed 104 people and led to the flight of large numbers of Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist civilians from the northern part of Rakhine state. The violence marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered in the region since October, when a similar but much smaller series of Rohingya attacks on security posts prompted a brutal military response.