REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SIT KWIN - The Muslims of Sit Kwin were always a small group who numbered no more than 100 of the village's 2,000 people. But as sectarian violence led by Buddhist mobs spreads across central Myanmar, they and many other Muslims are disappearing. 

Their homes, shops and mosques destroyed, some end up in refugee camps or hide in the homes of friends or relatives. Dozens have been killed. 

"We don't know where they are," says Aung Ko Myint, 24, a taxi-driver in Sit Kwin, where on Friday, Buddhists ransacked a store owned by one of the town's last remaining Muslims. "He escaped this morning just before the mob got here."

Since 42 people were killed in violence that erupted in Meikhtila town on March 20, unrest led by hardline Buddhists has spread to at least 10 other towns and villages in central Myanmar, with the latest incidents only a two-hour drive from the commercial capital, Yangon.

The crowds are fired up by anti-Muslim rhetoric, spread by telephone and social media networks such as Facebook, from monks preaching about a so-called "969 movement". The number is derived from Buddhism - the three numbers refer to various attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood - but it has come to represent a radical form of anti-Islamic nationalism which urges Buddhists to boycott Muslim-run shops and services.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. There are large Muslim communities in Yangon, Mandalay and towns across Myanmar's heartland.

The unrest poses the biggest challenge to a reformist government that took office in 2011 after nearly half a century of military rule.

In a nationally televised speech on Thursday, President Thein Sein warned "political opportunists and religious extremists" against instigating further violence. "I will not hesitate to use force as a last resort to protect the lives and safeguard the property of the general public," he said.

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