Over 100 Burmese forces flee to Bangladesh amid clash with ethnic rebels

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• Over 100 members of the Burmese Border Guard Police fled their posts and crossed the Bangladeshi border to take refuge from ethnic rebel forces.
• Rebel groups, including the Arakan Army and its parent Three Brotherhood Alliance, have made significant headway against Burma’s military junta since joining forces last year.
• Burma has been subject to military rule since the overthrow of democratically-elected State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi three years ago.

More than 100 members of Burma’s Border Guard Police have fled their posts and taken shelter in Bangladesh to escape fighting between Burmese security forces and an ethnic minority army, an official with Bangladesh’s border agency said Monday.

It is the first time that Burmese forces have been known to flee into Bangladesh since an alliance of ethnic minority armies in Burma launched an offensive against the military government late last year.

Shariful Islam, spokesperson for Border Guard Bangladesh, said the Burmese forces entered over the past two days during fighting with the Arakan Army in Burma’s Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.

1 DEAD AS 131 BURMA MIGRANTS ESCAPE MALAYSIAN DETENTION CENTER

The 103 troops entered through the Tombru border in Bandarban district, he said.

“They have been disarmed and taken to safe places,” he said.

Burma’s military government had no immediate comment.

Also on Monday, Bangladeshi media said two persons — a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya refugee — were killed in shelling from Burma after a house in Bandarban was hit.

Burmese Border Guard officers are seen after fleeing the country amid a clash with ethnic rebel forces, Ghumdhum, Bandarban, Bangladesh, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024 (AP Photo/Shafiqur Rahman)

Bangladesh’s law minister, Anisul Huq, told Parliament that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had instructed the military and paramilitary border guards to have patience in dealing with the tensions across the border.

“Bangladesh is observing the situation closely and steps will be taken,” the United News of Bangladesh agency quoted him as saying.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said Monday that Burma’s ambassador to Bangladesh, U. Aung Kyaw Moe, and Deputy Foreign Minister, U. Lwin Oo, told Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they would take back their troops sheltered in Bangladesh.

The ministry also sent a “note verbale” to the Burmese envoy in Dhaka, protesting bullets and mortar shells from Burma landing in Bangladesh.

The Arakan Army is the military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority that seeks autonomy from Burma’s central government. It has been attacking army outposts in the western state since November.

It is part of an alliance of ethnic minority armies that launched an offensive in October and gained strategic territory in Burma’s northeast bordering China. Its success was seen as a major defeat for the military government, which seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and is now embroiled in a wide-ranging civil war.

The alliance, called the Three Brotherhood Alliance, said in a statement Monday that the Arakan Army had attacked two border outposts in Maungdaw township in Rakhine state and captured one of them on Sunday.

Khaing Thukha, an Arakan Army spokesperson, said that fighting continued Monday at the second outpost.

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Bangladesh shares a 168-mile border with Burma and hosts more than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees, many of whom fled from Buddhist-dominated Burma starting in August 2017 when its military launched a brutal “clearance operation” against them following attacks by an insurgent group.