Burmese anti-coup fighters briefly seized several border outposts after junta-aligned militia defected and joined the rebels, sparking days of heavy clashes, state media reported yesterday.
Fighting has ravaged swathes of the country since the military’s 2021 putsch, with some established ethnic rebel groups training and fighting alongside newer People’s Defence Forces (PDF) against the junta.
Rugged Kayah state on the border with Thailand has become a resistance hot spot, hosting thousands of democracy protesters-turned-PDF fighters.
Photo: AP
Five border posts in the state guarded by Border Guard Force (BGF) troops had come under “massive attacks” from anti-coup fighters from June 13 to Monday last week, state media said.
Border Guard Forces are made up of former ethnic rebels now working with the military in exchange for local autonomy and lucrative business rights.
They are often deployed side by side with regular troops.
Communications with a BGF post in Pantain, southeast Kayah, were cut for several days, the state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
Fighters at the BGF post “had betrayed the state and the Tatmadaw [military] by launching a rebellion” and joining anti-coup fighters, the report said, without specifying how many had defected.
The defectors had taken weapons and ammunition with them, the report said.
Backed by air and artillery strikes, the military retook the post at Pantain on June 17, it added.
Another BGF post in Sukpaing was recaptured on Tuesday.
The military had suffered casualties in officers and other ranks, it said, without giving details.
Dozens of junta troops had defected, said the opposition National Unity Government, which is made up mostly of ousted lawmakers and is working to overturn the coup.
PDF groups have surprised the military with their effectiveness, analysts have said, and have dragged the military into a bloody quagmire.
In February, the junta said that it did not “fully control” more than one-third of the country’s townships.
Yesterday, a bridge on a highway linking commercial hub Yangon with the Thai border was mined and partially destroyed, local media reported.
A drone attack on soldiers and officials inspecting the damage killed two and injured dozens, said a military source who did not want to be named, as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Battling fierce opposition on the ground, experts have said the military is resorting to artillery strikes and air power.
On Tuesday, a military airstrike on a village in northern Sagaing region — another hotbed of resistance to junta rule — killed 10 civilians, locals and media reports said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS