The junta has increasingly deployed heavier force to quell the demonstrations, with more than 200 protesters reported to have been killed in the crackdown. Sunday was the deadliest day since the coup, with a local monitoring group documenting more than 70 people killed – the bulk of them in the Hlaing Tharyar township. The junta on Sunday imposed martial law on Hlaing Tharyar and later on other protest hotspot townships – effectively placing nearly 2 million people under complete control of military commanders. Residents – many of them migrant workers – have since fled back to their home states, piling their belongings and families on to flat-bed trucks and the backs of motorbikes. Those who stayed reported scenes akin to war.