Junta officials continue to refer to the civilian protesters as “terrorists” while growing anger at home and abroad seems to be totally lost on them. Officials even bragged about authorizing troops to use “live ammunition” against protesters starting today, even though an overwhelming number of yesterday’s dead were shot by the same sort of ammunition.

The true death toll remains entirely speculative, with the Health Ministry’s figures of 638 dead and 4,000 wounded excluding hundreds of slain civilians being held in makeshift morgues around the massacre sites, and the wounded toll no doubt counting only those who managed to get to official hospitals, while large numbers of casualties continues to flock to mosques where doctors had set up unofficial emergency clinics to treat them.