Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said 164 protesters had been killed in total, he also expressed sadness at the deaths

A 7-year-old girl was killed in her home when security forces opened fire in Myanmar’s second city Mandalay on Tuesday — the youngest victim so far in a crackdown against opposition to last month’s military coup.

The ruling junta accused pro-democracy protesters of arson and violence during the weeks of unrest, and said it would use the least force possible to quell the daily demonstrations.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said 164 protesters had been killed in total and he expressed sadness at the deaths. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) activist group says at least 261 people have been killed in the security forces’ crackdown.

“They are also our citizens,” Zaw Min Tun told a news conference in the capital Naypyitaw, a day after the EU and the US imposed more sanctions on groups or individuals linked to the February 1 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.

Staff at a Mandalay funeral service told Reuters that a 7-year-old girl had died of bullet wounds in Chan Mya Thazi township on Tuesday.

Soldiers shot at her father but hit the girl who was sitting on his lap inside their home, her sister told Myanmar Now media outlet. Two men were also killed in the township, it said.

The military had no immediate comment on the incident.

As night fell, candle-lit vigils were held in the commercial capital Yangon and other cities.

The junta has faced international condemnation for staging the coup that halted Myanmar’s slow transition to democracy and for its lethal suppression of the protests that followed.

It has tried to justify the takeover by saying a November 8 election won by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy was fraudulent — an accusation the electoral commission has rejected. Military leaders have promised a new election but have not set a date and have declared a state of emergency.