“We are aware of their report and we are reviewing it right now,” Kirby told reporters Thursday.
A series of attacks carried out on October 9 that killed nine police officers at three border posts in Myanmar was directed a by a group with ties to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group asserted in the report. Both countries are longtime allies of the United States.
Over the past two months, the government of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar has responded to the violence by cracking down on the Rohingya ethnic minority group, 27,000 of whom have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, according to the United Nations.
Myanmar's government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has claimed the Rohingya were backed by foreign “terrorists” but has been reluctant to provide further details.
The International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization based in Belgium, said the Mecca-based group Harakah al-Yakin directed the October attacks and is led by Ata Ullah, who was born in Pakistan and has a Rohingyan father. Ullah was raised in Mecca before receiving guerrilla-warfare training in Pakistan
