 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
A series of fierce battles took place in Kachin and northern Shan State between allied ethnic armies and Burmese army as the KIO-Burmese government delegations met face to face for talks in Myitkyina.
KIA’s 17th Battalion troops on Thursday fought against an unknown Burmese army unit near Hu Bu Manau Bum hill in northeastern Shan State at around 9 am, said a KIA source.
The Afghan Taliban have announced that they will launch a “spring offensive” from May 12, with attacks across the country at a time when foreign troops were devising an exit strategy.
The announcement this year comes just weeks ahead of the presidential election runoff as no candidate secured 50 percent plus one vote in the April 5 polls. The second round is expected in mid-June.
An ethnic Palaung rebel group claimed to have ambushed a Burma Army convoy in northern Shan State’s Kunlong Township on Wednesday, killing at least three soldiers and destroying two trucks.
“We fired seven RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. Two trucks were destroyed and burned. I only could see three bodies of soldiers fell out of the trucks. We do not know the exact number of deaths and injured,” said Mai Aie Kyaw, a spokesperson for the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).
The death toll from clashes between government forces and Abu Sayyaf bandits who launched a counterattack to regain control of a jungle training camp in Sulu has risen to 26, the military said yesterday.
Western Mindanao Command spokesperson Capt. Maria Rowena Muyuela said the latest field reports showed 25 Abu Sayyaf militants were killed and 24 of them wounded. On the government side, one Marine trooper died and 19 were wounded.
Authorities in India’s remote northeast called in the army to restore order and imposed an indefinite curfew after recovering seven more bodies Saturday that brought to 29 the number of Muslim villagers killed by separatist rebels in the worst outbreak of violence in the region in two years.
Army troops marched through the troubled areas of Assam state in a show of force after police said gunmen from the Bodo tribe, which has long accused Muslims of sneaking into India illegally from neighboring Bangladesh, went on a shooting rampage, setting ablaze Muslim homes and firing indiscriminately on civilians.