MAE SOT, (Thailand): Thailand has sent over 600 Myanmar refugees who fled fighting between the military and ethnic rebels back across the border, according to a senior Thai official who said on Sunday clashes were continuing.

Some of the refugees who reached northwest Thailand’s Tak province told Reuters before they went back over the frontier on Sunday morning that they had volunteered to return. On Sunday afternoon, Reuters reporters on the Thai side of the frontier were hearing continuous gunfire.

Provincial Governor Somchai Kitcharoenrungroj had told Reuters in the afternoon: “More people are willing to go back as they are worried about their property there.” Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson, urged Thailand not to rush refugees back to Myanmar.