Muslim man found dead after speaking to media

The headless body of a Muslim villager has been found days after he spoke to reporters on a rare government-guided media tour of restive northern Rakhine State, Myanmar police said on Friday.

Troops have taken control of the remote region bordering Bangladesh since October 9 when armed men raided police posts, killing nine officers.

At least 34,000 Rohingya Muslims have since fled to Bangladesh, taking with them allegations of mass-killings, rape and torture at the hands of Myanmar security forces.

The Myanmar government has vigorously denied the accusations, setting off the latest war of words over a stateless minority whose status is one of the country's most incendiary issues.

Police did not give a motive for the killing of the 41-year-old man, whose body was found floating in a river, but said he spoke to Burmese journalists on Wednesday in Ngakhura village.

Troops have killed more than 80 people in Rakhine since the start of crackdown, according to official figures.

In a statement Friday, the President's Office confirmed that a man -- whom they identified as Shu Nar Myar -- had been killed, adding that he had denied stories of military abuse when speaking to the reporters.

Northern Rakhine has been under lockdown for more than two months since the hundreds of armed militants launched surprise attacks on border posts.

ICG says the attackers are from a Saudi-backed group called Harakah al-Yaqin which emerged after a wave of sectarian violence cut through Rakhine in 2012.

The Rohingya have languished under years of dire poverty and discrimination from a government that denies them citizenship.

The UN and other rights groups have repeatedly called on Myanmar to grant them full rights, describing the Rohingya as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.