At least 19 children were wounded when at a elementary school was hit by shelling in Myanmar's Rakhine state, a lawmaker and a military spokesman said on Thursday.

Clashes between government troops and ethnic insurgents have intensified in Rakhine, from where tens of thousands of people have been displaced since clashes began in December 2018, bringing new chaos to the region from which more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled a military crackdown in 2017.

The Arakan Army, which recruits from the mostly Buddhist majority, has been fighting for greater autonomy for the western region from the central government.