The 'Lost' Villages of Myanmar's Rakhine - bellingcat

The 'Lost' Villages of Myanmar's Rakhine - bellingcat

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Pooja Chaudhuri

Pooja Chaudhuri is a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat with a focus on human rights and conflict. She has a Master's in Data Journalism from Columbia University.

Miguel Ramalho

Miguel is an Investigative Technologist for Bellingcat. He uses data and code to investigate and communicate stories, he experiments and builds research tools with and for the online investigations community.

The 'Lost' Villages of Myanmar's Rakhine

May 27, 2026

Myanmar

Rakhine

A "river of blood" was how one survivor described the scene in western Myanmar. “I saw shooting. I saw mass killing." Another told the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC) how 20 relatives, including three children, had been killed in the 2024 attack on Htan Shauk Khan village.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said earlier this month that the Arakan Army (AA) “may have killed at least 170 Rohingya men, women, and children” in Hoyyar Siri (known as Htan Shauk Khan in Burmese) in Buthidaung Township. It described the May 2, 2024, attack as a “massacre”.

Buthidaung is one of the two townships in Rakhine State that is home to the majority of the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority in the predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.

At least 40 villages in Buthindaung were burned down in April and May 2024 amid clashes between the AA, an ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military junta for control of Rakhine, and junta forces battling to retain their hold of the township.

Both sides committed abuses against civilians during the clashes, according to HRW. The military junta’s forced conscription of Rohingya to fight on its behalf has also intensified violence against them.

The military and Rohingya armed groups began arson attacks in Buthidaung township in April 2024. By mid-May the AA had captured all junta bases, according to the think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The destruction of Buthidaung has previously been documented by Bellingcat.

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The AA has denied accusations that it massacred civilians in Buthidaung, claiming that those killed were junta soldiers and Rohingya militants.

Bellingcat emailed the United League of Arakan, AA’s political wing, about the alleged attack on civilians but did not receive a response at the time of publication. Myanmar’s Ministry of Defence also did not respond to our questions.

Evidence of civilian harm in Myanmar is slow to emerge and difficult to obtain due to the military’s strict control of the region and the tight grip of armed groups such as the AA in areas they control.

“The mass killing could only be confirmed more than a year later,” the recent HRW report said, “when survivors eventually crossed into Bangladesh and found their way to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.”

Aerial imagery shows that Htan Shauk Khan was almost entirely destroyed in May 2024.

False-colour infrared map from Copernicus on Planet Insights Browser shows exposed ground in grey or tan, indicative of possible damage, in the village.

Erasing Homes

A new investigation by Bellingcat has identified 115 villages in Rakhine State, similar to Htan Shauk Khan, as partially or completely destroyed since the February 2021 military coup that overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government.

The data points to a pattern of violence that leaves civilian areas uninhabitable and in some cases, erases them completely.

MapLibre | Protomaps | Planet Labs © OpenStreetMap contributors

Several buildings were set on fire when the junta allegedly dropped a<br>bomb on the Muslim village of Zu La on Nov. 3, 2024. The fire was captured nearby on<br>NASA FIRMS.

Satellite imagery indicates that it was attacked again on Dec. 9, 2024. Visible smoke can be seen<br>rising from the village.

Zu La is located in Maungdaw Township. Along with neighbouring Buthidaung, Maungdaw is home to<br>the majority<br>of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya.

Zu La, and the neighbouring village of Gone Nar, previously faced violence during the 2017<br>Rohingya genocide.

Satellite imagery from that year shows them completely burned to the ground.

They show signs of reconstruction after 2017.

But repeated attacks in 2024 destroyed the villages again.

Neither of the villages appears on the latest maps from 2024. These are produced by the United<br>Nations mapping unit, based on Myanmar government maps.

Steve Ross, Senior Fellow at the US nonprofit Stimson Center who is leading the ‘Crisis in<br>Myanmar’s Rakhine State’ project, told Bellingcat this is part of the military’s broader<br>campaign to deny the existence of the Rohingya and erase identity in Rakhine.

Bellingcat contacted the Myanmar government but had...