AKIPRESS.COM - The Myanmar army has released the results of an internal investigation in which it exonerates itself of blame regarding the Rohingya crisis.

It denies killing any Rohingya people, burning their villages, raping women and girls, and stealing possessions.

The assertions contradict evidence seen by BBC correspondents of a crisis the United Nations has called "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Amnesty International said the army's report was an attempted "whitewash".

The human rights organisation called for UN fact finders to be allowed in to the region.

Media access to the area has been severely restricted but on one tightly-controlled trip, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head saw local Buddhist men setting a Rohingya village alight in front of armed policemen.

More than half a million people from the stateless and mainly-Muslim Rohingya minority have fled mainly-Buddhist Myanmar since August this year, after a counter-insurgency operation responding to Rohingya militants attacking police posts and killing members of the security forces.