The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar warned Monday of possible civil war in the country, saying people are arming themselves against the military junta and protesters have started shifting from defensive to offensive actions, using homemade weapons and training from some ethnic armed groups, AP reported.

Christine Schraner Burgener told a virtual U.N. news conference that people are starting self-defense actions because they are frustrated and fear attacks by the military, which carried out a coup on Feb. 1 against the democratically elected government and is using “a huge scale of violence.”

A civil war “could happen,” she said, and that’s why for the past three weeks from her base now in Thailand she has discussed with many key parties the idea of starting an inclusive dialogue that would include ethnic armed groups, political parties, civil society, strike committees and the army, known as the Tatmadaw, as well as a small group of witnesses from the international community.