Dozens of Myanmar Soldiers Killed in Rebel Clashes Near China Border
March 14, 2017 8:49 AM
FILE - A rebel soldier of Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) places a machine gun bullet belt around the neck of another soldier at a military base in Kokang region, March 10, 2015.
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YANGON, MYANMAR —
Dozens of Myanmar soldiers have been killed in several clashes between ethnic rebels and the army along the border with China, state media reported on Tuesday, threatening leader Aung San Suu Kyi's chief goal of ending decades of ethnic strife.
More than 20,000 people from Myanmar have crossed China's border in recent weeks to escape the bitter fighting in the north, prompting Beijing to call for ceasefire between ethnic militias and Myanmar security forces.
"There were at least 48 armed clashes with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), resulting in the deaths of dozens of soldiers," Myanmar's state-run daily, the Global New Light of Myanmar, said.
It did not give exact numbers of soldiers killed in what it described as area clearance operations by government troops running from March 6 to 12.
Last week, the government said five residents and five traffic policemen had been killed and twenty dead bodies discovered after the MNDAA's March 6 initial assault on Laukkai, the capital of the northeastern region of Kokang.
"Scores of citizens" were injured in the attacks, the paper added.
Suu Kyi, who swept to power in 2015 on promises of national reconciliation, has been struggling to give fresh impetus to the stuttering peace process, as ethnic representatives accuse her of siding with the military.
About 270 staff of a hotel in Laukkai were "abducted" by the MNDAA on March 6 and taken to the neighboring Chinese town of Nansan for forced military training, the paper said.
MNDAA had safely escorted the hotel staff to Nansan in a move the workers "supported and acclaimed", the group said on its website.
The area was now in a "state of war" as fighting worsened, the group said in an "urgent notice" posted on the website on Sunday.
MNDAA is a part of the Northern Alliance - a coalition of rebel groups comprising one of Myanmar's most powerful militias, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and two smaller groups that have been in a stand-off with the Myanmar military since clashes in the Kokang area in 2015.
Many died and tens of thousands fled the region during that fighting, which also spilled over into Chinese territory and resulted in the death of five Chinese people, angering Beijing.
https://www.voanews.com/a/dozens-of...-rebel-clashes-near-china-border/3764995.html
Myanmar clashes with rebels 'kill 47 soldiers'
Media captionThe BBC's Jonah Fisher reports: "In the last couple of years we have not heard of any incident which comes even close to the casualties being reported now"
Nearly 50 soldiers have been killed in a week of fighting between government troops and Kokang ethnic rebels in Myanmar, state media report.
The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said air strikes had been used in the response to the flare-up in Shan state, near the Chinese border.
The BBC's Myanmar correspondent, Jonah Fisher, says it is the heaviest fighting in at least two years.
It comes as the government tries to sign a peace deal with rebel groups.
There are reports that thousands of people have been leaving the area to escape the fighting.
China said on Tuesday that some people had crossed over into its southern Yunnan province, and that they were being looked after.
Analysis: Jonah Fisher, Myanmar correspondent
The Kokang are a Han Chinese ethnic group, and their armed wing a remnant of the Burmese Communist Party which fragmented in 1989.
For years they have run a largely autonomous strip of land on Myanmar's north-eastern border with China.
This dramatic upsurge in fighting appears to have been triggered by the return of one of their leaders - Phone Kya Shin - from five years of exile in China.
In 2009, Phone Kya Shin was forced to flee by Burmese troops - but he has now returned promising to restore the rights of the Kokang people.
The newspaper said there had been at least 13 separate clashes in the area in recent days with the Kokang rebels, known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Rebels attacked army bases close to Laukai, capital of the Kokang area of Shan state, it said. At least 47 soldiers were killed and more than 70 injured.
The report did not indicate any rebel casualty figures, but the Irrawaddy newspaper, based in Thailand, quoted the general secretary of MNDAA as saying two rebels had died and one was injured.
Htun Myat Lin said up to 10,000 people had fled as the military carried out air strikes using jets and helicopters.
Myanmar has been trying for decades to contain conflicts involving ethnic rebel movements seeking greater autonomy, largely in Shan and Kachin states.
President Thein Sein has been pushing for peace deals with these groups, and while many have come into the political fold sporadic outbreaks of violence have continued.
On Thursday, he held talks with the leaders of about a dozen armed groups in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw, including the MNDAA.
But they ended with no deal reached beyond a commitment to negotiate further.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39182713
Myanmar: 160 killed in clashes with rebels in Shan
Military says months-long conflict near border with China killed 74 soldiers, 13 civilians and at least 45 ethnic rebels
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asia - pacific 28.02.2017
By Kyaw Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar
Clashes with ethnic rebels in Myanmar’s southeastern Shan State have killed more than 160 people including 74 soldiers, according to the military Tuesday.
Fighting had intensified in the mountainous area along the Myanmar-China border since an alliance of four ethnic rebel groups launched a joint offensive in November last year.
On Tuesday, the military released a statement saying 74 soldiers, 15 police, 13 local militias and 13 civilians have died during months-long conflicts in restive Shan.
It added that at least 45 rebels have been killed and four others captured alive by troops.
In November, the combined forces of the Northern Alliance -- the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and Arakan Army (AA) -- attacked military checkpoints, police outposts and the 105th Mile Trade Zone in Muse town.
The rebels had held the strategic town of Mongkoe in the area for nearly three weeks, but withdrew after government troops fought back using military helicopters and heavy weapons in early December.
Despite the government’s subsequent announcement that the area had been brought under control, fighting is still reported.
Since independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar (then Burma) has seen over a half-century of armed conflict involving ethnic rebels.
Replacing the junta in 2011, former President Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian administration began peace talks with rebels.
The talks led to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), a landmark peace deal between his government and eight out of the 15 rebel groups invited. However, several major rebel groups refrained.
Myanmar still witnesses some of the fiercest fighting between certain rebel groups and the military although a civilian government took power in March 2016.
State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has repeatedly called on the rebels to join the peace process by signing the NCA.
However, seven ethnic rebel groups released a joint statement Friday saying they have decided not to sign the ceasefire agreement, saying the NCA can’t bring peace as it lacks all-inclusiveness.
“Instead we must forge a new path to peace,” the groups said after meeting in the Shan border town of Pangkham.
Among the groups are the KIA, MNDAA, TNLA, AA, United Wa State Army, National Democratic Alliance Army and Shan State Army-North.
Southeast Asiasecurity
Shadowy rebels extend Myanmar’s wars
The little-known Arakan Army, one of the country's newest insurgent outfits, is responsible for rising violence in the country's remote western regions
By
David Scott Mathieson Yangon, June 11, 2017 1:49 PM (UTC+8)
Myanmar solders patrol the streets at Thapyuchai village, outside of Thandwe in the Rakhine State. Photo: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun
The stirring soundtrack of the video ‘Dream in Our Heart’ is accompanied by statements of defiance by ethnic Rakhine soldiers, male and female, of the Arakan Army (AA) from their mountain redoubt in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State.
Army commander Major General Twan Mrat Naing (aka Tun Myat Naing) speaks to the camera: “Our message to Naypyidaw and Burmese army is we will never ever give up, we will fight until we achieve our objective.”
That objective, articulated in the video widely distributed online, is the total liberation of Myanmar’s Rakhine State from “Burmese fascism” and the Myanmar army which has long occupied Rakhine State and oppressed its people.
The little known Arakan Army is unique in that as one of Myanmar’s smallest ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) still fighting the central government, it operates in four ethnic states at either end of this large country: far from ‘home’ in Kachin and northern Shan States, and in the west in the borderlands of Chin and Rakhine State, where many of the groups fighters hail from.
Formed in April 2009, the AA’s central aims are self-determination for the Arakan people, to safeguard national identity and cultural heritage and promote ‘national’ dignity. Its political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), was formed soon after the militant wing.
The army partly formed as a response to widespread frustration amongst young Rakhine with the largely moribund Arakan Liberation Party/Army (ALP/A) and its political wing based on the Thailand-Myanmar border, which only ever operated alongside the large Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and not for many years in Rakhine State.
The ALP signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement in October 2015, and some of its members have voiced support for the AA and condemned allegations of Myanmar army abuses against its supporters.
Most international understanding of ethnic Rakhine grievances stem from the long persecution of Rohingya Muslims and communal violence which rocked the state in 2012. But this obscures long-standing resentment of decades-long of neglect by the Myanmar state which has made Rakhine State one of Myanmar’s least developed and poverty wracked areas.
The AA explicitly uses the colonial era Arakan terminology, rejecting ‘Rakhine’ as a Myanmar term that implicitly sees the Rakhine as second class citizens, and that fuels broader Myanmar ridicule of the Rakhine as yokels who speak a tortured dialect of the Burmese language, akin to the dismissal of people from the Deep South in the United States.
The Kingdom of Arakan was sacked by the Myanmar kings in the 15th Century, and evidence of this rich cultural heritage is preserved in the ancient ruins of Mrauk-U.
Drawing on disaffected migrant workers from the Hpakant jade mines, the AA was hosted and trained by the Kachin Independence Army, one of Myanmar’s oldest and most sophisticated insurgent groups. Within two years, the AA was on the frontline alongside its Kachin allies, after the 17-year ceasefire between the Kachin and government collapsed in 2011, leading to heavy fighting which displaced over 100,000 civilians, hundreds of civilian casualties and destroyed villages, and combatant casualties numbering in the several thousand.
The AA operates in Northern Shan State as part of the Northern Alliance, which includes the Kokang-Chinese Myanmar Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta-ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and Brigades 4 and 6 of the Kachin Independence Army. Underscoring the bewildering relationships of the Myanmar civil war, the Arakan Army also operated alongside ethnic-Myanmar soldiers of the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF) until that group signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) in October 2015.
The alliance has markedly stepped up operations against government targets, including the November 20, 2016 attack on the China-Myanmar border trade city of Muse, in which several civilians were killed and injured, bridges blown up, and the subsequent seizing of the border town of Mong Ko, before alliance fighters were driven from the town by the Tatmadaw’s use of heavy artillery and air-strikes.
The Northern Shan State fighting has been largely eclipsed by international attention on the repression of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, but it seizes domestic attention far more because of its marked intensification in recent years.
The Alliance assault on the former MNDAA stronghold of Laukkai in March, in which AA troops took part, included attacks on the main hotel and casino in which civilians and policemen alike were targeted, and allegedly scores of men and women were abducted as human shields during the insurgents retreat into the hills.
The AA’s participation in these northern operations for the past several years is predicated on the expansion of their trained and battle-tested fighters to open a front in their home state. As early as 2013, Rakhine political leaders were lobbying the previous government of U Thein Sein to open an area for AA fighters to relocate from Kachin State to Rakhine State, although with little support from the government.
In 2015, the AA opened a new area of operations in the borderlands of Buthidaung, Kyauktaw, and Mrauk-U townships of Rakhine State, and Paletwa township of Chin State close to the Bangladesh border. In several bouts of fighting between the AA and the Tatmadaw, the military admitted to losing several troops, including officers to Arakanese sniper fire.
The Tatmadaw reported 15 clashes between December 28, 2015 to January 4, 2016 in which large amounts of weapons and ammunition were captured. Fighting flared again in April and May, and in December 2016 in Paletwa, as Tatmadaw troops continued to sweep the area to interdict AA movements along the borderlands.
According to AA sources, the Tatmadaw have deployed ten battalions from their Western Command and Military Operations Command 15 based in Buthidaung to pacify their movements in three townships (Infantry battalions 374, 375, 376, 539 in Kyauktaw, 377, 378, 540 in Mrauk U, and 379, 380 and 540 in Min Bya).
The current size of the AA is difficult to measure. Some estimates place their total numbers at 1,500, which is fairly standard size for many smaller ethnic insurgent groups, while training in the north continues to attract large numbers of male and female recruits. (The KIA numbers around 7,000, while the United Wa State Army has over 25,000 under arms.)
The fighting has generated a cycle of dynamic civilian displacement necessitating international and national relief operations to supplement large humanitarian operations that exist for civilians displaced by communal violence in 2012 and responses to natural disasters.
The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported 1,100 IDP’s in eight temporary sites in Kyauktaw, Rathedaung and Buthidaung, and worked with Rakhine relief agencies and the state government to assist civilians.
Reports of extortion, ill-treatment and forced recruitment by the AA have increased, which are often countered by allegations of Tatmadaw brutality, including in one statement “witnesses and victims described how the armed forces forcedly (sic) displaced entire villages and destroyed, beatings with the barrel of a gun, executions, gun rape, looting and the burning of their homes.”
The fighting has exacerbated tensions between the AA and ethnic Chin civilians in Paletwa, and has sparked public criticism by Chin leaders and reports from the Chin Human Rights Organization that AA soldiers have been abducting Chin civilians, using others as forced labor, and planting landmines around civilian areas.
Chin political parties have condemned both sides of using of landmines without apportioning specific blame for reports of widespread human rights violations. Just days ago, Indian media reported that an estimated 300 Chin civilians, predominantly women and children, had fled Myanmar to seek sanctuary in Mizoram in northeast India, claiming that the AA had detained the men from Ralie village inside Chin State.
The AA dismissed these allegations in a statement posted to Facebook, and alleged that renegade Arakan Liberation Army soldiers were masquerading as AA forces to extort money from civilians and discredit the insurgent outfit. In such isolated settings, verifying various allegations of abuses is almost impossible.
The Myanmar military has responded to the the AA’s increased operations in Rakhine State with a wave of arrests of civilians suspected of providing material support to the insurgents. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma, 58 Rakhine civilians have been sentenced under Section 17(1) of the Unlawful Association Act, with eight more facing trial while in detention in Sittwe Prison.
Bonds between Rakhine politicians, activists and the AA are tight: Maj-Gen Twan Mrat Naing’s father-in-law is the Rakhine State parliamentary Speaker of the House, U Saw Kyaw Hla.
In early April, the authorities stopped a fund-raising football match in Mrauk-U, dubbed the ‘Arakan Army Cup’ during the annual Thingyan water festival, and arrested a Buddhist abbot Nanda Thara and a lay supporter Khaing Ni Min charging them under Section 505 of the Penal Code related to causing public alarm or inciting people to violence.
These arrests have evinced widespread protests throughout Rakhine State and contribute to a sense of persistent Burman persecution of the Rakhine, the dismissal of their political aspirations, the continued plunder of their natural resources with only perfunctory development projects from the central state to assuage them.
Further antagonizing Rakhine political leaders, in May 2016 the national parliamentary speaker U Win Myint blocked a proposal by ANP MP Daw Khin Saw Wai for an urgent discussion on aid for civilians displaced by fighting between the AA and Myanmar army, because, the speaker said, the proposal was predicated more on raising the issue to push for inclusion of the AA in the nationwide ceasefire process.
The AA attended the Union Peacemaking Conference in Naypyidaw, having been invited as part of the Northern Alliance, facilitated by the Chinese special envoy to the peace talks. But the AA’s attendance comes after two years of official denunciations of their activities, with statements from both the military and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi being all but identical, demanding the group disarm and then seek peace.
Defense Minister Lieutenant General Sein Win told the national parliament the AA had to cease its activities and sign the controversial nationwide ceasefire agreement. In a statement from Suu Kyi in March, she warned the non-signatories to the ceasefire that the only way to achieve peace was to sign, and to be ‘extremely careful’ in how they respond to that condition.
Exactly how does the AA pay for all this expanding activity? Given their popularity in Rakhine State, tax collection not just amongst supporters in their home state, but the many thousands of migrant workers in peri-urban factories of Yangon and the jade mines of Kachin State and Sagaing Region would be lucrative.
Involvement in the drug trade cannot be ruled out. In one of the most evocative front pages of the state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar, in February 2016, the headline boldly proclaimed ‘How to Fund a War’, outlining a series of raids and arrests of AA officers in Yangon in which large numbers of arms and ammunition were seized, and reportedly 330,800 methamphetamine pills, or yaba.
The AA issued a ‘condemnation letter’ on the same day refuting the allegations as “childish and undignified” and blamed the Myanmar military for being the main player in the drug trade. Reporting on the drug trade in Rakhine State is perilous: last March the Sittwe home of the online editor of the Root Investigation Agency, Min Min, was bombed and the journalist forced to flee to Yangon.
International analysts reporting on restive Rakhine State guardedly claim that the AA has rarely publicly articulated anti-Rohingya or anti-Muslim sentiments, even though many AA officers will privately declare that Rohingya are all Bengali illegal immigrants and should leave: a position identical to the Myanmar army and many ultra-nationalist activists in the country.
This changed recently, however. Following the coordinated attacks on Myanmar Border Guard Police outposts in Maungtaw by suspected Rohingya militants of the Harakah al-Yaqin (Faith Movement, later renamed as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army), the ULA/AA issued a press release which called the militants “savage Bengali Muslim terrorists” and the violence a “rampage of the Bengali Islamic fundamentalist militants in Northern Arakan.”
The statement furthermore said “(T)he bordered area (sic) of the Northern Arakan and other cities such as Rangoon (Yangon) are now suffering adverse effects as a result of Arakan’s bordering with the population explosion of Bangladesh, the excessive entering of illegal Bengali immigrants into Arakan for decades and the neglect of the successive Burmese regimes to the Bengali’s intrusion and territorial expansion.”
There is little likelihood that the AA’s attendance at the largely symbolic Panglong 21st Century will make any real headway in addressing Rakhine grievances, and the expansion of their armed operations looks set to continue.
The intense nationalist messages expressed by Maj Gen Twan Mrat Naing and the AA troops under his command are widely held in Rakhine State, where resentment against the Myanmar state and military is widespread, and often misunderstood by the outside world which identifies Rakhine political grievances as being primarily driven by anti-Rohingya sentiment.
This lack of understanding of the AA’s armed revolt will only further postpone the resolution of the conflict and prolong the communal divisions that have generated conflict in Rakhine State for years. This is a dimension of the civil war in Myanmar that is only getting worse, not better, and is dangerously misunderstood.
David Scott Mathieson is a Yangon-based independent analyst
http://www.atimes.com/article/shadowy-rebels-extend-myanmars-wars/
April 6, 2017 10:00 am JST
Myanmar's army struggles against a strong new rebel alliance
Nightmare logistics, poor intelligence and better coordinated foes spell trouble
ANTHONY DAVIS
Ethnic insurgents stand guard in upper Shan State during recent clashes with the Myanmar army in Shan State on Feb. 17. (Photo by Steve Tickner)
If the upsurge of hostilities that has shaken northeastern Myanmar in recent weeks were to be summed up in just two words, they would be
deja vu. To a remarkable degree, the bitter fighting which has erupted in the Kokang region of northeastern Shan State has been a replay of events in the same region almost exactly two years ago. But there is one salient difference: The crisis confronting Myanmar's embattled military is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The early hours of March 6 saw well-armed insurgents storm into Laukkai, capital of the mainly ethnic Chinese Kokang special region, a rugged slice of territory wedged between the Salween River and the Chinese border. More than 30 were killed in the first hours of clashes as rebels attacked army and police posts and a large hotel in the city center. They also attacked army garrisons further north in a clearly coordinated offensive.
As the military, also known as the Tatmadaw, struggled to reassert control and push back the attackers, Myanmar's media reported "dozens" more troops killed, along with an unconfirmed number of ethnic Chinese rebels of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). Meanwhile, to the west of the Salween, allied ethnic Palaung guerrillas cut roads and attacked posts, diverting government forces and interdicting movement on the main highway between Mandalay and China.
On both sides of the river, the insurgents were operating from a manual first tested in early 2015. On Feb. 9 that year the MNDAA and ethnic allies on both banks of the Salween came down from the mountains to storm Laukkai and other towns. It took the military three months to reassert control, first over urban centers and then strategic heights. Hundreds were killed and wounded in some of the most bitter fighting since Myanmar's independence from Britain in 1948, when the country was known as Burma. While the parallels between February 2015 and March 2017 are striking, the military and political environment in which they have unfolded is very different.
Politically the main change has been the slow demise of a peace process centered on a fragile pact known as the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement -- which to date has been signed by only eight mostly militarily insignificant ethnic armed groups from a total of at least 20 nation-wide.
Kachin Independence Army soldiers confront Tatmadaw troops at the Hkaya Bhum mountain post in Laiza, Myanmar, in January 2013. (Photo by Steve Tickner)
Adopted by the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, funded by Western donors and grudgingly endorsed by a skeptical Tatmadaw, the current process has essentially collapsed amid intensifying conflict. That escalation has been the direct result of what one might call the coming of age of the northern rebel coalition. Comprising the MNDAA, the ethnic Palaung Ta'ang National Liberation Army, the small Arakan Army and elements of the Kachin Independence Army, the alliance has grown in both capability and size, with an estimated 10,000 troops under arms across northern Shan State. Its geographical reach, operational coordination, and a striking readiness to attack urban centers are all unprecedented.
In November 2016 the coalition gave itself a formal name - the Northern Alliance-Burma (NAB) -- and launched its second major offensive. A wave of carefully coordinated attacks targeted a string of towns along the Chinese border west of the Salween -- notably the border trade hub of Muse -- while cutting the national highway from Mandalay and Lashio to the Chinese border.
Far less visible than the dramatic rise of the NAB, however, has been its flip-side -- the slow-burn crisis of strategy and capability facing the Tatmadaw. Having largely lost the battlefield initiative in the north, the army is now confronting a range of challenges it is ill-prepared to meet, let alone overcome.
At the national level, the Tatmadaw's slow war of attrition against its main insurgent challenges has traditionally -- and critically -- relied on a policy of divide-and-rule. In operational terms that has meant concentrating the bulk of resources against one enemy while neutralizing others with de facto or official cease-fires.
Decisive offensives in the 1990s against the once powerful Karen National Union on Myanmar's eastern border with Thailand moved forward once a cease-fire had been secured with the northern Kachin; and, more recently after 2012, vice versa. Other potential threats, such as that posed by the powerful United Wa State Army, were held in abeyance by a cease-fire that encouraged the Wa to focus on "business activities," primarily narcotics production.
https://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20...struggles-against-a-strong-new-rebel-alliance
Myanmar Military Closes Off Shan State Township After Ambush by Rebel Army
Report
from
Radio Free Asia
Published on 08 Aug 2017 —
View Original
The Myanmar military has closed all entry and exit points in Mantong township in the country’s war-torn northern Shan state following an ambush by an ethnic armed group on a national army convoy, a local official said Tuesday.
It is unknown whether there were any casualties in the Aug. 5 attack in Mantong, one of the two townships in the Palaung self-administered zone overseen by the ethnic Palaung, or Ta’ang, people — a Mon–Khmer ethnic minority found in Shan state. The zone’s other township is Namhsan.
Ethnic militias, including the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), have been engaged in periodic clashes with the Myanmar military in volatile Shan state.
“Only the entry point was closed in the past few days, but today the exit points were also closed,” said Thein Zaw, a member of the Palaung Self-autonomous Administrative Committee.
“People are having difficulties because of the closures, and some cannot even leave to get their basic supplies,” he said, adding that many of Mantong’s residents work on tea plantations outside Mantong and that some must travel to other towns for medical treatment.
A Myanmar army officer from light infantry division 77, which is in charge of the town’s security, told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the soldiers do not want the closures to affect the movement of residents, but they have no other choice.
“We don’t want to restrict their movements, but they [the rebels] are taking residents as new recruits — one person from each household — and some complied out of fear,” said the officer who declined to be named.
“So it seems every house has a rebel, and they have become informers about our movements,” he said.
TNLA battalion 434 has been engaged in hostilities with the national army’s light infantry division 77 in the Palaung self-administered zone in recent days, according to information on the website of the Palaung State Liberation Front, the TNLA’s political wing.
Past clashes
The TNLA has been fighting the government army and another ethnic armed group — the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA) — in Shan state since late November 2015, about six weeks after the signing of a nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA) between the government and eight of the country’s more than 20 ethnic armed groups.
The TNLA was excluded from signing the accord because of its ongoing hostilities with Myanmar's armed forces.
The clashes have forced thousands of residents to flee their homes in northern Shan state and seek shelter in Buddhist monasteries.
The TNLA is also a member of the Northern Alliance of four ethnic militias that launched coordinated attacks on Nov. 20 on 10 government and military targets in Shan state. The other members of the alliance are the Arakan Army (AA), Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Reported by Kan Thar for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
http://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar...s-shan-state-township-after-ambush-rebel-army
Clashes Flare Between Myanmar Army And Ethnic Rebels in Kachin Mining Region
RFA - Saturday 17th June, 2017
Government troops and a rebel militia began fighting in the Tanaing gold and amber mining region of northern Myanmar's Kachin state on Friday, following the military's order for workers and residents of the resource-rich area to evacuate it by mid-month, residents said.
Myanmar soldiers and fighters from the Kachin Independence Army begin fighting around 8 a.m. about nine miles from Tanaing township, they said.
Hostilities began in the township's Ja Htu Zup village, and KIA soldiers also launched an offensive at Kaung Ra village near Tanaing town, the online news service Democratic Voice of Burma reported, citing an unidentified source from the KIA.
Migrant workers from elsewhere in Myanmar and others who live in the mining region told RFA's Myanmar Service that they heard the sounds of heavy weapons being fired and cannot leave the area because the roads are closed.
So far no casualties have been reported.
Thousands of people have moved out of the area since June 6, a day after the Myanmar military dropped fliers warning them to evacuate by mid-June before beginning a clearance operation of the area.
They are staying temporarily in Christian churches and Buddhist monasteries in Kachin state or have returned to their hometowns in other parts of Myanmar.
The fliers warned that if residents failed to leave the area by June 15, the military would consider them to have connections to the KIA, sources told RFA's Myanmar Service on June 7.
Some people, however, have remained behind in nearby villages, workers and locals said.
The KIA controls the areas where the mines are and depends on amber and gold mining activities as a source of income.
A woman and her two daughters were injured on June 4 when four artillery shells fell on their home in Kawng Ra village, a day after fighting first began in Tanaing.
Reported by Kyaw Thu for RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Copyright 1998-2014, RFA. Published with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036
http://www.myanmarnews.net/news/253...rmy-and-ethnic-rebels-in-kachin-mining-region
