Soldiers in the Myanmar military have, for the first time, given detailed accounts of horrific human rights abuses they say they were forced to carry out.
One teenage girl was cowering behind iron bars in a house that was set to be set ablaze when suddenly a soldier, Corporal Aung, spotted her.
"I can't forget her shouting, I can still hear it in my ears and remember it in my heart," the soldier told the BBC in a harrowing testimony.
He told his captain about the sighting, who replied: "I told you to kill everyone we see".
Corporal Aung shot a flare into the room and the soldiers stood listening for 15 minutes to the screams of the young girl as she was burnt alive.
"It was heartbreaking to hear. We heard her voice repeatedly for about 15 minutes while the house was on fire," he recalls.
This is one of many testimonies from six soldiers, who have recently defected and are under the protection of a militia group fighting to restore democracy, who spoke on condition of anonymity to give insight about the military's brutal regime.
The military seized power from the democratically elected Government in a coup last year and they are attempting to overthrow the armed civilian uprising.
One soldier says he joined the military for the money, but was shocked by what he was forced to do which included raping, torturing and killing civilians.
Maung Oo says he thought he had been recruited to the military as a guard.
But ended up being part of the unit that forcibly rounded up civilians hiding in a monastery in May 2022.
"We were ordered to round up all the men and shoot them dead. The saddest thing was we had to kill elderly people and a woman", he told the BBC.
A woman called Hla Hla, who witnessed the execution, said the victims included a mum who had been carrying a young child.
Hla Hla said she heard the soldiers boasting about the killings, saying it had been "delicious" to kill people.
Head soldiers reportedly paraded around the villages shouting "Burn! Burn!" as they set alight about 60 buildings - burning them to ash.
Around 10,000 people have defected from both the army and the police since the 2021 coup, according to a group called People's Embrace, formed by former military and police personnel.
Another soldier who has been named Thiha described how young women were detained by soldiers and then gang-raped for days.
General Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for Myanmar's military, denied the BBC investigation and that the army has been targeting civilians.
