MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (AP) — The top UN envoy to Myanmar toured a central city Sunday destroyed in the country's worst explosion of Buddhist-Muslim violence this year, calling on the government to punish those responsible for a tragedy that left dozens of corpses piled in the streets, some of them charred beyond recognition.

Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. secretary-general's special adviser on Myanmar, also visited some of the nearly 10,000 people driven from their homes after sectarian unrest shook the city of Meikhtila for several days this week. Most of the displaced are minority Muslims, who appeared to have suffered the brunt of the violence as armed Buddhist mobs roamed city.

Nambiar said he was encouraged to learn that some individuals in both communities had bravely helped each other and local religious leaders were now advocating peace.

"There is a certain degree of fear and anxiety among the people, but there is no hatred," Nambiar said after visiting both groups on Sunday and promising the world body would provide as much help as it can to get the city back on its feet. "They feel a sense of community and that it is a very good thing because they have worked together and lived together."

But he added: "It is important to catch the perpetrators. It is important that they be caught and punished."

Nambiar's visit came one day after the army took control of the city to enforce a tense calm after President Thein Sein ordered a state of emergency here.

The bloodshed marked the first sectarian unrest to spread into the nation's heartland since two similar episodes rocked western Rakhine state last year. It is the latest challenge to efforts to reform the Southeast Asian country after the long-ruling military ceded power two years ago to a civilian government led by retired army officers.

There are concerns the violence could spread, and the bloodshed has raised questions about the government's failure to rein in anti-Muslim sentiment in a predominantly Buddhist country where even monks have armed themselves and taken advantage of newfound freedoms to stage anti-Muslim rallies.



No new violence was reported overnight, but residents remained anxious.



Muslims, who make up about 30 percent of Meikhtila's 100,000 inhabitants, have stayed off the streets since their shops and homes were burned and Buddhist mobs armed with machetes and swords began roaming the city.

Residents complained that police had stood by and done little to stop the mayhem. But "calm has been restored since troops took charge of security," said Win Htein.


The struggle to contain the violence has proven another major challenge to Thein Sein's reformist administration, which has faced an upsurge in fighting with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north and major protests at a northern copper mine where angry residents — emboldened by promises of freedom of expression — have come out to denounce land grabbing.

The devastation was reminiscent of last year's clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya that left hundreds of people dead and more than 100,000 displaced — almost all of them Muslim. The Rohingya are widely perceived as illegal migrants and foreigners from Bangladesh; the Muslim population of Meikhtila is believed to be mostly of Indian origin.


Residents and activists said the police did little to stop the rioters or reacted too slowly, allowing the violence to escalate. "They were like scarecrows in a paddy field," said San Hlaing, a local businessman who said he counted 28 bodies.

Khin Maung Swe, a 72-year-old Muslim lawyer who said he lost all his savings, complained that authorities did nothing to disperse the mobs.

"If the military and police had showed up in force, those troublemakers would have run away," he said, inspecting the remains of his damaged home.

Occasional isolated violence involving Myanmar's majority Buddhist and minority Muslim communities has occurred for decades, even under the authoritarian military governments that ruled the country from 1962 to 2011.