A mass grave has been found with about forty-five corpses inside the bush as families are called to identify the dead bodies.

Devastated relatives howled by rows and rows of rotting corpses today after the bodies of massacred women and children were found in a mass grave.

Authorities in Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - displayed 45 bodies of Hindu villagers they say were slaughtered by Muslim Rohingya insurgents.

The gruesome discovery of the mass grave in the north of Rakhine state comes amid a new round of violence in the conflict between the state's Buddhists and Muslims.

The location of the pit in the Southeast Asian nation was tracked down using details given by Hindus who have sought refuge from the violence in Bangladesh.

Reporters and families of people believed murdered were brought to see for themselves evidence of the massacre.

Relatives also started the horrific task of trying to identify the bodies.

Speaking about how the grave was found, police officer Okkar Ko said: "We followed the paths based on the information we got from the other side.

"We found where the soil wasn't normal and then when we dug up the ground, the smell came out."

Major Zayar Nyein, of Border Guard Police Headquarters in Maungdaw, said: "We are still searching for more mass graves in that same area.

"I don't know exactly why these terrorists killed that many people.

"The Hindu village was very much up north and communication was not that good and that's why security forces were not able to reach out to the area sooner."

The government's Information Committee has released a statement on its Facebook page saying that from October 2016 to August 2017, at least 79 people were killed in attacks and 37 have gone missing, including local officials, public servants and security forces.

Another 84 were killed and 54 have gone missing since August 25, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, launched attacks on at least 30 police outposts.

Myanmar troops are still searching for nearly 50 more Hindu villagers feared slaughtered.

But the military response to the insurgent attacks has driven 480,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and drawn UN accusations of ethnic cleansing by the army with the help of Buddhist vigilantes.