Anti-coup militants in Myanmar patrol the smoldering ruins of a burned village after a retaliatory attack by junta forces fighting to break resistance to last year’s military coup.

Corrugated iron roofs, support beams and cooking utensils are all that remain in the ashes of the village in northwest Sagaing – an area where some of the fiercest fighting against the military takeover has taken place.

Rare footage from AFP shows a region ravaged by violence and riddled with junta forces, pro-military militias and anti-coup militants, where internet access is regularly cut by authorities.

Win Soe said junta forces destroyed his village of Tharyarkone, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, late last month.

“Soldiers came to our village on the way back to their camp,” he said.

“There was no fighting here, they just came to destroy things – they burned 60 houses in our village,” said Win Soe.

A group of about a dozen young men – some in combat fatigues, soccer socks and sneakers, others in shorts and sandals – arrived to inspect the burned remains of the village while patrolling the district, followed by military forces.

The unit is part of a local “People’s Defense Force” (PDF), dozens of which have sprung up in Sagaing and across the country to fight the military and try to overthrow the coup that ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu last year Kyi repressed .

Some of these groups, often armed with little more than homemade weapons and knowledge of the terrain, have surprised the military with their effectiveness, according to some analysts.

The junta has responded with an offensive that human rights groups say has included village demolitions, extrajudicial mass killings and airstrikes on civilians.

In May, the UN agency UNOCHA said more than 12,000 civilian buildings were believed to have been burned down or destroyed since the coup.

The military blames PDF fighters – whom it has declared “terrorists” – for setting the fires and says their assassination campaigns have killed hundreds, including Buddhist monks, teachers and medical workers.

The post-coup violence has pushed the number of people displaced in Myanmar to more than a million, according to the UN, adding to those previously displaced from their homes by long-running conflicts in ethnic border areas.

Sagaing — home to the predominantly ethnic Bamar people and a traditional recruiting ground for the military — has displaced more than half a million people since the coup, according to the UN.

Even in villages that escaped flaring, locals said they lived in fear of military violence.

“When soldiers came to our village, we hid behind some bushes, but my son was in poor health and could only hide nearby,” said San Nwae of Mintaingpin village near Tharyarkone.

“When the soldiers found him, they beat him to death. From where I was hiding, I heard someone being killed,” she said.

“After the soldiers left the village… I came out of hiding and realized that the man who had been killed was my son.”

Diplomatic efforts by the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to resolve Myanmar’s bloody impasse have made little headway as the generals refuse to confront opponents.

“We’ve been fighting the military for a year, but we don’t have enough weapons and we’re only fighting with our homemade weapons,” said an anti-junta PDF member.

He acknowledged that his group of about 20 fighters often couldn’t hold off the military for long.

“When the soldiers come to our village, we warn the villagers to run away and try to evacuate them,” he said.

“When soldiers arrest villagers, most of them are killed.”