Myanmar army and rebels in new clashes
What you need to know:
Thousands of people have been displaced in the past month by ongoing clashes between the Shan State Army-North and government forces, with the military launching air strikes against ethnic insurgents.
YANGON, Wednesday
Fresh fighting has broken out between the military and rebel groups in Myanmar’s north, forcing hundreds of civilians to flee less than two weeks after a historic poll victory for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Thousands of people have been displaced in the past month by ongoing clashes between the Shan State Army-North and government forces, with the military launching air strikes against ethnic insurgents.
“We didn’t dare stay as helicopters kept coming to attack,” said a 41-year-old teacher, who escaped with 15 other people in her car.
“People were frightened,” she told AFP at a monastery in Lecha Town — 100 kilometres from the scene of fighting.
The army said there was fighting in Kachin and Shan states, areas of the country that have been plagued by ethnic conflicts for 70 years.
Last month, President Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government signed ceasefires with a clutch of ethnic armed groups, but several major conflicts persist in the war-torn nation.
The Shan State Army-North and the Kachin Independence Army refrained from the deal and have been engaged in clashes with government forces for months.
As fighting continued in the run-up to the landmark vote, authorities cancelled elections in seven national parliament constituencies — all in Shan — as well as suspending voting in swathes of northern Kachin state and Karen state in the east. )
