The United States expressed concern about the crisis in Myanmar and urged authorities to allow humanitarian access to restive Rakhine state as violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority continues.
Refugees arriving in already packed camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, many exhausted and desperately hungry, have brought harrowing tales of murder, rape and widespread arson. Some 164,000 Rohingya have fled since violence erupted two weeks ago.
"There has been a significant displacement of local populations following serious allegations of human rights abuses - including mass burnings of Rohingya villages and violence conducted by security forces and also armed civilians," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Thursday.    
"We again condemn deadly attacks on Burmese security forces, but join the international community in calling on those forces to prevent further attacks on local populations."   
The United Nations says more than 250,000 refugees, most of them Rohingya, have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh since violence began last October.
Witnesses say entire villages have been burned to the ground since Rohingya fighters launched a series of attacks on August 25, prompting the latest military-led crackdown. 
Myanmar accused of laying landmines on Bangladesh border
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday her government was doing its best to protect everyone in Rakhine.
Suu Kyi did not refer specifically to the exodus of the minority Rohingya.
Critics have accused her of not speaking out for the Rohingya, some 1.1 million people who have long complained of persecution and are seen by many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
Some have called for the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991 as a champion of democracy to be revoked.
"We have to take care of our citizens, we have to take care of everybody who is in our country, whether or not they are our citizens," Suu Kyi said in comments to Reuters Television's Indian partner, Asian News International.
"Of course, our resources are not as complete and adequate as we would like them to be but, still, we try our best and we want to make sure that everyone is entitled to the protection of the law."
Suu Kyi said the situation in Rakhine has been difficult for many decades and so it was "a little unreasonable" to expect her administration, which has been in power for 18 months, to have resolved it already.