Executive Summary
On 4 August 2025, the Arakan Rohingya National Council (ARNC) published a statement indicating that the Arakan Army (AA) killed more than 600 Rohingya civilians on 2 May 2024 (over a year earlier).
The incident was claimed to have occurred in Htan Shauk Khan (ထန်းရှောက်ခံ) village, Buthidaung township, Rakhine State. In the Rohingya language, it is also called Hoyyar Siri (ဟောယ်ယာစီရီ).
It appears that the Rohingya National League was the first to raise the allegation on social media on 6 May 2024. The organisation claimed the AA killed 111 individuals from 16 Rohingya families on 2 May 2024.
On 3 August 2025, the media outlet AAMIJ news reported about the same massacre in Buthidaung township, this time including images depicting several burial sites.
A Rohingya political activist called Ro Nay San Lwin also wrote about the incident on X on 3 August 2025. This included four images showing a large deposition site of human remains reportedly taken at a different area but within Htan Shauk Khan village.
Myanmar Witness was able to geolocate one of the burial sites with high confidence, and another with medium confidence. A forensic analysis of the available imagery was also conducted and confirmed the presence of human remains, but could not establish the identity of the deceased.
Furthermore, the AA acknowledged clashes with the State Administration Council (SAC) on 4 May 2024, claiming to have killed SAC soldiers as well as captured prisoners of war (POW), but made no public reference to a burial or deposition site.
On 20 August 2025, the AA invited journalists and alleged residents from the village to the burial site for interviews. Some of the interviews included statements denying the mass killings of Rohingya civilians. While the visuals and interviews do match with Myanmar Witness’s geolocation assessment of the burial sites, it has not been possible to independently verify the testimonies.
Some footage from the burial site showed a man, allegedly part of the AA, retrieving what appears to be military equipment and human remains from the water. This raises the possibility that SAC members may be among the dead, but this cannot be confirmed. Moreover, even though there appears to be some civilian clothing featured in user-generated content (UGC), this is not sufficient to determine whether the victims were civilians.