Officials in Myanmar say they are going to prosecute an Italian couple who filmed an adult movie at one of the country's holiest temples.

The tourists face up to two years in prison after they uploaded the footage onto the site PornHub.

The video, which had been viewed over 250,000 times, has since been taken down, and the couple's whereabouts are unknown.

They made the film at a Buddhist temple in the ancient city of Bagan.

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​News of the footage had caused outrage in the country.

U Myo Win of the Mandalay Tourist Guide Society, said that Bagan was a "sacred place".

"Everyone who visits the country must behave properly and respect it. Our country's tourism is culture-based tourism, so such an insult should not be accepted or repeated," reported The Irrawaddy.

"Myanmar authorities have been looking for the people involved to take action according to the existing laws," Aung Aung Kyaw, the country's archaeology department for Bagan, told dpa.

Myanmar takes laws against insulting religion seriously.

In 2014, Wellington man Philip Blackwood was jailed after posting a picture of Buddha in headphones on a Facebook post to promote his local bar. The former Tawa College and Victoria University student was accused of religious crimes and ended up spending 13 months in the notoriously inhumane Insein Prison, in Yangon. He was released in 2016.

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