The three days of violence have been too chaotic to establish a precise death toll — and officials reached by telephone refused to answer questions about casualties. But estimates among witnesses rose as high as 50, with one news photographer counting 15 corpses in the streets on Friday morning alone.

Some witnesses also wondered whether the violence had been organized. State news agencies in Myanmar said the fighting began on Wednesday after a dispute in a Muslim-owned gold shop. The Associated Press said the customers were Buddhist. But the severity of the violence suggests that deeply held hatred in the city, buried during five decades of military rule, is surfacing with the country’s newfound democratic freedoms.

Just as in western Myanmar, where more than 150 people have been killed in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims over the past year, those behind the violence in Meiktila tried to stop images of the destruction from getting out. On Friday, a group of Buddhist monks threatened news photographers, including one who works for The Associated Press, with a sword and homemade weapons. With a monk holding a blade to his neck, U Khin Maung Win, the A.P. photographer, handed over his camera’s memory card.

“We are trying to leave the town,” Mr. Khin Maung Win said by telephone. “They are now after journalists, too.”

The notion of Buddhists, especially monks, rampaging through Muslim neighborhoods with weapons is jarring to the outside world. But it follows the same pattern of violence seen in western Myanmar over the past year, where radical monks have helped to stir up hatred against Muslim ethnic group members who call themselves Rohingya.