Myanmar government forces flee into Bangladesh during fighting with an ethnic armed group

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Practically 100 members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police have fled their posts and brought shelter in Bangladesh throughout preventing between Myanmar safety forces and an ethnic minority military, an official of Bangladesh’s border company mentioned Monday.

Shariful Islam, spokesperson for Border Guard Bangladesh, mentioned by cellphone that the Myanmar forces entered Bangladesh over final two days to flee preventing with the Arakan Military in Myanmar’s Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.

They entered Bangladesh via the Tombru border in Bandarban district, he mentioned.

“In whole 95, Myanmar troops are there now,” he mentioned. “They’ve been disarmed and brought to protected locations.”

Since Saturday, gunshots could possibly be heard coming from the Myanmar facet of the border, native media reported.

The Arakan Military is the well-trained army wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority searching for autonomy from the central authorities and has been attacking military outposts within the western state since mid-November.

It’s a part of an alliance of ethnic minority armies that launched an offensive in late October, gaining strategic territory within the nation’s northeast bordering China. Its success was broadly seen as a significant defeat for the army authorities, which seized energy in February 2021 from the elected authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi and is now embroiled in a wide-ranging civil warfare.

The alliance, referred to as the Three Brotherhood Alliance, mentioned in an announcement Monday that the Arakan Military had attacked two border outposts in Maungdaw township in Rakhine state and captured certainly one of them on Sunday.

Khaing Thukha, an Arakan Military spokesperson, mentioned later Monday that preventing was nonetheless persevering with on the second outpost.

Myanmar’s army authorities made no speedy remark.

The alliance contains the Arakan Military, the Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military and the Ta’ang Nationwide Liberation Military.

Bangladesh shares a 271-kilometer (168-mile) border with Myanmar and hosts greater than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees, a lot of whom fled from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar beginning in late August 2017 when its army launched a brutal “clearance operation” in opposition to them following assaults by an rebel group.

Julhas Alam, The Related Press