(Reuters). More than 30 people including children and women were burned alive in Myanmar’s Kayah state, which was ravaged by conflict on Friday. This is according to a local resident as well as media reports and a human rights organization.

Karenni Human Rights Group stated that the group found burnt bodies of people internally displaced, including women and children, at the Mo So village in Hpruso, on Saturday.

In a post on Facebook, the group stated that they strongly condemned the brutal and inhumane killings which are in violation of human rights.

State media reported that the Myanmar military had killed unspecified amounts of opposition soldiers in the village. According to it, the seven-vehicle group did not stop at the military and continued on their way.

It was impossible to reach the Myanmar military immediately for comment.

The photos were shared by local media as well as the human rights group. They showed bodies on burned-out truck beds with charred remains.

Karenni National Defence Force was one of many civilian militias that opposed the coup. It claimed the victims were not their own members, but civilians fleeing conflict.

A commander of the group said to Reuters that they were shocked by how many dead bodies had different sizes. This included children and women as well as old people.

One villager, who requested anonymity for security purposes, said that he had been aware of the Friday night fire but was unable to go directly to the scene because it was being shot.

“I saw this in the early morning. He told Reuters that he saw burned bodies and the clothing of children and mothers scattered around.

Thai authorities confirmed that fighting continued in another area of Myanmar, close to the Thai border, where the Myanmar military is still at war with an rebel group. A wayward rocket-propelled bomb damaged a Thai house near the Thai side of border, but there were no injuries or deaths.

The Myanmar military carried out airstrikes https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-airstrikes-displace-more-people-along-thai-myanmar-border-2021-12-24 a day earlier on an area controlled by the Karen National Union (KNU) near the border in an escalation of fighting that flared up last week and has since sent thousands fleeing into Thailand.

Myanmar is in chaos since Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize winner for Peace and Justice, was overthrown by the military almost eleven months ago. She claimed fraud in the November elections that she had won. The ballot was fair, according to international observers.

The coup and the subsequent crackdown against protesters angered civilians who took up arms. All over the country, there have been many local resistance groups.

Many opponents have been labeled traitors or terrorists by the military, who has also outlawed a self-proclaimed National Unity Government, which seeks lobbying the international community to stop the junta consolidating its power.