Exclusive - Rohingya villagers blockaded amid fresh tensions in Myanmar's Rakhine - residents

FILE PHOTO: Men walk at a Rohingya village outside Maugndaw in Rakhine state, Myanmar October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo

YANGON (Reuters) - Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims have been blockaded inside their area by their Buddhist neighbours in a western Myanmar village, residents say, as religious tensions in troubled Rakhine state spread to a more ethnically mixed part of the region.

Monitors and aid workers worry that violence that has until now been largely confined to the Rohingya-majority northern part of Rakhine, bordering Bangladesh, could erupt in an area where the two communities live side-by-side in much larger numbers.