BANGKOK — At least five people have been killed in fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar, residents and a hospital official said Thursday, in another sign of a resurgence of communal violence that is testing the country’s fledgling democracy.

Buddhists, including monks from nearby monasteries, led a rampage through the Muslim quarter of the city of Meiktila on Thursday seeking to avenge the death of a monk the day before, according to a news photographer who witnessed the fighting.

“The area was like a killing field,” said the photographer, Wunna Naing. “Even the police told me that they could not handle what they witnessed. Children were among the victims.”

Muslims and Buddhists have clashed several times in western Myanmar over the past year, but the fighting in Meiktila has raised fears that religious strife is reaching into the heartland of the country.