Soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque in Lashio, Myanmar. (AFP)

Lashio (Myanmar), May 29 (AP): Hundreds of Buddhist men on motorcycles, screaming and waving iron rods and sticks, roamed the streets of a town in northeastern Myanmar today in a new wave of violence targeting Muslims. At least one person died and four others were injured, state television said.

A mosque, a Muslim school and other buildings were burned in the two days of rioting. Many Muslims stayed locked inside their homes and shops remained shuttered in Lashio town, near the border with China, the latest region to fall prey to the country’s spreading religious violence.

The flare-up in Lashio reinforced doubts that President Thein Sein’s government can or will act to contain the violence and crack down on racial and religious intolerance.

The rioting was sparked yesterday by reports that a Muslim man had splashed petrol on a Buddhist woman and set her on fire. The man was arrested and the woman was hospitalised with bad burns.

Mobs took revenge by burning down the mosque and other buildings yesterday, but caused no reported casualties. Calm appeared to return as troops were deployed on the streets and authorities banned gatherings of more than five people and imposed an overnight curfew.

But today several hundred angry young men drove motorcycles through Lashio’s downtown area. A Buddhist monk was seated on the back of one of the motorcycles, waving a stick.

On another street, a crowd threw rocks at buildings. Smoke billowed in another area, and local politician Sai Myint Maung said a movie theatre had been burned and there were rumours that more troublemakers were gathered on the outskirts of the town.

Wary Muslims hid in their homes, fearing the kind of brutal violence that claimed dozens of lives earlier this year in other parts of the country, and the large-scale attacks that killed hundreds in western Myanmar last year.