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Myanmar’s fragile ceasefire with several armed ethnic insurgent movements is in danger of unraveling after a military coup this week, a senior representative of a coalition of rebel groups told Reuters on Wednesday.
More than two dozen ethnic armed groups are active in Myanmar’s borderlands. Some have signed ceasefire agreements while others continue to wage conflicts that flare sporadically.
A prominent cleric and his driver were killed in an explosion from a bomb stuck to their car, one of a series of bombings around Kabul on Tuesday that also wounded seven people.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani denounced the cleric’s death as a “terrorist attack on the dignity and bright future of Afghanistan.” No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Kabul attacks, which also wounded five people.
The head of Myanmar’s military has taken charge of the country from its civilian-run government, an army-run television station declared, after civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her party were detained in a Monday morning raid.
The coup marks a major blow to the country’s transition from military rule to democracy, which began about a decade ago. The U.S. and human-rights groups called on the military to adhere to democratic norms.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a powerful car bombing at a military base in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province that killed at least 14 soldiers on Saturday.
The bombing, in the Shirzad district of the province, wounded four other soldiers, according to a local councillor, Ajmal Omar.
More than a dozen embassies, including the US and EU delegation, on Friday urged Myanmar to “adhere to democratic norms”, joining the UN in a chorus of international concern about a possible coup.
Myanmar is just a decade out of nearly 50 years of military rule, with a nascent democracy governed under a junta-authored constitution which dictates power-sharing between the civilian administration and the country’s generals.