Armed rebels in Myanmar's war-torn Kachin state on Tuesday said they had released three police officers abducted in a raid last week during fresh clashes with the nation's powerful army.

Tensions in Kachin have overshadowed Myanmar's efforts to bring an end to its multiple civil conflicts in border areas -- a key component of the former junta-run nation's political reforms.

A senior U.S. diplomat Tuesday criticized Myanmar's policies which impose severe restrictions on the Muslim Rohingya community in Rakhine, saying they "oppress" people in the strife-torn state. 

Violence between Buddhists and the Muslim minority community tore through the western state in 2012, leaving over 200 people dead and sparkling outbreaks of religious violence across the country that have overshadowed its democratic transition.

Myanmar's army chief said peace in the war-ravaged nation is in the hands of ethnic rebels, in an interview broadcast Monday, as a fresh surge in unrest in northern Kachin state casts doubt over ceasefire efforts.

Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said peace was the "only path" if the country is to continue its democratization and development, in a rare interview with Singapore's Channel NewsAsia.

A top American diplomat Friday decried growing religious intolerance in Myanmar and warned the use of faith for political ends was "playing with fire" in a crunch election year for the former junta-run country.

His comments came as hundreds of monks staged a rally in Yangon blasting the United Nations for perceived bias towards Rohingya Muslims, in the latest show of strength for Buddhist nationalists.

Hundreds of villagers fled their homes in northern Myanmar's war-torn Kachin state Thursday, an activist said, as fresh clashes erupted between rebels and government troops after a local politician was briefly taken hostage.

The army launched new attacks against ethnic Kachin rebels before dawn in Hpakant township after government-backed media said the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) took the state transport minister Kamann Du Naw and three policemen hostage.

Two more Rohingya migrants have died in southern Thailand after trucks packed with dozens of members of the Myanmar Muslim minority group were intercepted by authorities, police said on Wednesday.

The two men, both believed to be aged 20, died in hospital of hunger and dehydration on Tuesday, a day after police reported a Rohingya woman had died from suffocation while making the same journey through the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia said on Monday it beheaded a Myanmar female child-killer, bringing to seven the number of death sentences carried out this year in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

After a trial, Layla bint Abdul Mutaleb Bassim was executed for killing her husband's daughter Kalthoum bint Abdul Rahman bin Ghulam Gadir, aged six, the interior ministry said, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency.

A Rohingya woman has died after suffocating in a truck packed with migrants from the Myanmar Muslim minority group as they traveled through southern Thailand, police said Monday.

Authorities found five pickup trucks carrying nearly 100 Rohingya before dawn on Sunday in the Hua Sai district of Nakhon Si Thammarat province on the Gulf of Thailand.

Rescuers Friday called off the search at a jade mine in war-torn northern Myanmar that was struck by a landslide this week after all missing people were accounted for, police said.

Four bodies were pulled from the rubble at the mine in Hpakant town, Kachin state, which was engulfed by a wall of mud on Tuesday evening.

Rescuers continued to comb through rubble Thursday for victims of a landslide at a jade mine in war-torn northern Myanmar that killed at least three people, according to police.

An unknown number of miners are missing after heavy rain triggered a landslide in Hpakant town in Kachin state on Tuesday evening, a local police officer told Agence France Presse.