When the local police chief, U Tin Maung Lwin, inspected the body of Ms. Aye Kyi, her daughter and granddaughter remember his saying, “How cruel.” But in a telephone interview, Mr. Tin Maung Lwin, who, like the vast majority of government employees, is Buddhist, denied using “cruel” to describe the murder.

“I did not use words that favor one side or the other,” he said.

After five decades of military rule, Myanmar remains a heavily militarized country, where the army alone numbers around half a million men and where plainclothes intelligence officers are ubiquitous. Yet security forces were unwilling or unable to stop the Buddhist mob here.

Muslim villagers say the authorities were well aware of the danger because they received a telephone call from the local police station on Sept. 30, the day before the violence, warning them of looming danger and instructing them to erect a gate at the entrance to the village.

In the early hours of Oct. 1, when villagers received reports that a mob of several dozen men was approaching, they made urgent phone calls to the police and military units a few miles away.

U Myint Aung, a Muslim farmer, says the security forces responded with skepticism. “They asked us, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ ” he said.

“We told them, ‘Yes, we are sure. Come quickly!’ ”

A single police vehicle arrived and dispersed a first wave of attackers before dawn. But the mob that killed Ms. Aye Kyi returned midmorning, and the police fled after firing into the air, villagers say.

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Lt. Col. Kyaw Tint, a senior police officer in Rakhine State, said “security forces did their best.”