Rohingya women stand in front of their makeshift home in an unregistered Rohingya refugee camp in Teknaf June 17, 2012. 
 
 YANGON | 
 
 YANGON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday praised Myanmar's response to recent deadly sectarian fighting, despite criticism by rights group Amnesty International that Muslim Rohingyas are still fleeing arbitrary arrest by border forces. 
 
 The vote of confidence from Washington will be a welcome relief to reformist President Thein Sein after mob violence in western Myanmar last week threatened to derail the country's move towards democracy. 
 
 After days of clashes between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, the president on June 10 declared a state of emergency in Rakhine state, sent security reinforcements, imposed a curfew and made a televised address. 
 
 "This is something we would not have seen in the past. The government is trying to help everybody who needs it whether that is Rakhine Buddhists or Muslims," Michael Thurston, the U.S. embassy's charge d'affaires in Myanmar, told Reuters in his office in Yangon. 
 
 Despite the upbeat U.S. assessment, much of northern Rakhine state remains a no-go area from which journalists and independent observers are banned, making it impossible to verify the government's version of events. 
 
 The World Food Programme said on Tuesday the recent violence had displaced 90,000 people, or three times more than the government's estimate. This has raised fears that the official death toll of 50 could also rise dramatically. 
 
 There has also been no mention in state media of hundreds of Rohingyas attempting to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh, a point London-based Amnesty International highlighted in a report on Tuesday. 
 
 "The basic humanitarian needs of these people must be met immediately, as many still lack adequate food, water, shelter, and medical attention," Amnesty said, urging the government to allow local and international aid agencies "full and unhindered access" to all displaced people. 
 
 Amnesty said an estimated 1,500 people had been illegally denied refuge across the border last week by Bangladesh. Bangladesh border guards detained at least 150 Rohingya men on Monday trying to enter in small boats. 
 
 "They were fleeing a wave of mostly arbitrary arrests by Myanmar border forces." 
 
 The clashes follow a year of dramatic political change, including the freeing of hundreds of political prisoners, the signing of peace deals with ethnic minority rebel groups and the holding of by-elections dominated by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party. 
 
 All this had persuaded the United States and Europe to suspend economic sanctions. 
 
 SLOW RELIEF 
 
 Thurston said the government had been quick to ask for international help, in sharp contrast to the sluggish request for assistance by the then-ruling generals following Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 138,000 people in 2008. 
 
 "The response this time is far and away better than Cyclone Nargis," Thurston said. "It's not just myself that thinks this. Most of my colleagues agree that this has been a very different and better response." 
 
 If there are human rights abuses, the United States wants to see them fully investigated, a U.S. embassy spokesman added. 
 
 Aid workers in Rakhine, however, say thousands of displaced Rakhines and Rohingyas remained in dire conditions more than a week after the violence. 
 
 "The response of government is still so slow and the help of the government has been weak since June 10," said Khaing Kaung San, a member of local relief group Wan Latt Foundation, which is running some camps for displaced people in Rakhine state. 
 
 "I don't think the response of government has improved since Cyclone Nargis. It has been almost the same." 
 
 News coverage of the relief effort in the state-run New Light of Myanmar, which consists mainly of photos of senior military officers donating supplies, also strongly resembles the junta's post-cyclone response. 
 
 Security fears and poor infrastructure have hindered relief efforts, keeping many aid groups on the sidelines. 
 
 "The U.N. will go in as soon as possible. But we have to be able to operate under humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality, and we also have to be assured of our security," said Aye Win, a U.N. spokesman in Myanmar. 
 
 Rakhine state officials say eight aid groups, including the Red Cross and World Food Programme, were providing assistance. 
 
 The violence flared on June 8 with a rampage of rock-hurling, arson and machete attacks after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman blamed on Muslims. A district court sentenced two men to death on Monday for the woman's death. 
 
 Tensions stem from an entrenched distrust of around 800,000 Rohingyas, who are recognised by neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh, and are largely considered illegal immigrants. 
 
 The government had yet to address the underlying problem, Amnesty said. 
 
 "Restoring the pre-violence status quo is not sufficient," it said, "as systemic discrimination against the Rohingyas characterizes decades of state policy in Myanmar." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep and Jeremy Laurence) ||||| A court in Myanmar has sentenced two men to death for the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman whose killing last month helped set off communal violence in which more than 50 people died, state media reported Tuesday. 
 
 The verdict was handed down Monday in western Rakhine state's Kyaukphyu district, according to the state-run Myanma Ahlin daily. 
 
 Three Muslim Rohingyas were detained after the 27-year-old Buddhist woman was killed May 28, but one of the three defendants in the case hanged himself while in custody. 
 
 The woman's death was followed by the June 3 lynching deaths of 10 Rohingyas, who were dragged off a bus by a Buddhist mob. 
 
 The attacks helped set off almost a week of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingyas, who are denied citizenship and ethnic recognition in Myanmar and instead are viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 
 
 Thousands of homes were burned and 50 people were killed in the unrest, which has brought to the fore discrimination and hatred against the Rohingya and tested the stability of Myanmar's reform-minded government, which was elected after nearly half a century of army rule. 
 
 London-based Amnesty International urged the government to let aid agencies enter the area to independently investigate the fighting and to help the many people who fled their homes and still haven't returned. The government says 30,000 people were displaced by the violence. 
 
 "The basic humanitarian needs of these people must be met immediately," Amnesty said in a statement Tuesday. It added that the violence in Rakhine state has diminished considerably, human rights abuses continue and many people lack adequate food, shelter and medical attention. 
 
 Some civil society leaders have expressed concern that people are using newfound freedoms to incite racial hatred, particularly online in social media. 
 
 Government authorities have vowed to bring those responsible for the violence to justice, and Border Affairs Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Htay had declared lawlessness unacceptable. 
 
 No executions are known to have been carried out in Myanmar since at least 1988.
– Some 90,000 people who have fled ethnic violence in western Burma are in need of emergency food aid, the United Nations warns. The rape and murder of a Buddhist woman last month, for which two men have been sentenced to death, set off violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in which at least 50 people died and thousands of Rohingyas were forced to flee their homes, the AP reports. Some 800,000 Rohingyas live near Burma's border with Bangladesh and neither country recognizes them as citizens. But unlike in previous outbreaks of violence in Burma, the US government has praised the government's response. "This is something we would not have seen in the past. The government is trying to help everybody who needs it, whether that is Rakhine Buddhists or Muslims," an embassy official tells Reuters. He notes that the Burmese government has been quick to ask for help, unlike in the aftermath of 2008's Cyclone Nargis, when the refusal to allow in foreign aid was blamed for thousands of deaths. Aid workers, however, say thousands of people are still in dire conditions almost a week after the violence subsided.