According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group and a domestic news source, Myanmar security forces fired rifle grenades at demonstrators in a town near Yangon on Friday, killing more than 80 people.
Security forces piled bodies in the Zeyar Muni pagoda compound and cordoned off the city, witnesses and domestic media outlets say, so details on the death toll in Bago, 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Yangon, were initially unavailable.
On Saturday, the AAPP and Myanmar Now news outlets reported that 82 people were killed in the country's protests against the February 1 military coup. According to Myanmar Now, the shooting began before dawn on Friday and continued through the afternoon.
"It's genocide," a protest organizer named Ye Htut was quoted as saying by the news outlet. "They're aiming at any shadow," says the narrator.
According to social media pages, many residents of the town have left.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for Myanmar's military junta could not be reached.
AAPP has previously stated that 618 people have died since the coup, based on a regular count of demonstrators killed and detained by security forces.
The military disputes this figure, claiming that the coup was staged because Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a rigged election in November. The argument was refuted by the election commission.
Major General Zaw Min Tun, a spokesman for the Junta, told a news conference in the capital, Naypyitaw, on Friday that the military had reported 248 civilian deaths and 16 police deaths, and that security forces had not used automatic weapons.
According to domestic reports, a coalition of ethnic armies in Myanmar that has protested the junta's crackdown attacked a police station in the east on Saturday, killing at least ten officers.
According to reports, fighters from a coalition consisting of the Arakan Army, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army attacked a police station in Naungmon, Shan state, early in the morning.
At least ten police officers were killed, according to Shan News, while 14 were killed according to Shwe Phee May.
Myanmar's military rulers said on Friday that anti-government demonstrations were diminishing because citizens wanted peace and that election would be held within two years.
On Friday, expelled Myanmar lawmakers urged the UN Security Council to take action against the military.
"Our people are willing to pay any price to reclaim their rights and independence," Zin Mar Aung, the acting foreign minister for a coalition of deposed lawmakers, said. She urged members of the Council to exert overt and indirect pressure on the junta.
"Myanmar is on the verge of state breakdown, state collapse," Richard Horsey, a senior advisor on Myanmar with the International Crisis Group, said at the informal UN meeting, which was the first time council members had discussed Myanmar publicly.
