According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, more than a million people have been displaced in Myanmar since last year’s military coup.
The Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the military toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s government last year, sparking widespread armed resistance.
The junta has responded with a crackdown that rights groups say will include the demolition of villages, extrajudicial mass killings and airstrikes on civilians.
Since the coup and up to last month, 1,017,000 people have been internally displaced, UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.
It added that more than half of those forced to flee are in the country’s northwestern Sagaing region, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting.
There are “significant challenges” in delivering humanitarian aid to the region, UNICEF said.
Sagaing is riddled with junta troops, pro-military militias and anti-coup militants, and the authorities regularly shut down internet access.
More than 12,000 civilian buildings are said to have been burned down or destroyed across Myanmar since the coup, the UN agency UNOCHA said in May.
Last month at least 11 school children died in an airstrike and gunfire on a village in Sagaing, an attack the junta said was aimed at rebels hiding in the area.
Diplomatic efforts to end the crisis have been hushed up.
A “consensus” brokered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last year aimed at facilitating dialogue between the military and its adversaries and the delivery of humanitarian aid has been largely ignored by the junta.
