Myanmar border troops flee to Bangladesh amid clashes with rebels

Panic has gripped Myanmar refugee camps as many wait to leave for Bangladesh. (document)

Dhaka:

At least 95 Myanmar border guards have fled to Bangladesh in the past few days, some injured, officials said on Monday, as fighting between Myanmar’s rebels and the military regime intensified.

The junta is facing its biggest challenge since a 2021 coup against the elected government as it tries to contain a bloody rebellion, with anti-junta coalition groups backed by a pro-democracy parallel government seizing control of several military posts and towns.

Gunshots could be heard from across the border in Bangladesh’s southeastern tourist region of Cox’s Bazar, home to nearly a million members of Myanmar’s Muslim minority who fled a local military crackdown in 2017. Inside the bamboo and plastic shack.

Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) members entered Bangladesh with weapons and 15 of them suffered gunshot wounds while crossing the border, Bangladesh Border Guard spokesman Sharif Islam said on Monday, adding that the injured were being treated at different places. Hospital.

Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Commissioner for Refugee Relief and Repatriation in Cox’s Bazar, said the BGP troops could be resettled in the nearby Bandarban district before being sent back to Myanmar.

“I was asked if the Border Protection Agency could safely shelter in the transit camps built in Bandarban for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees. These camps are already empty,” Rahman said.

Bullets and mortars from the Myanmar border fell into Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least two people, a government official in Cox’s Bazar said.

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Mohammad Shamsud Douza, the Bangladeshi government’s deputy official for refugee affairs, said: “Mortar shells fired from Myanmar killed a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya near the border. People and a child were injured.”

He said many residents on the Bangladesh side of the border had fled out of fear to stay with relatives away from the violence.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say panic has gripped refugee camps in Myanmar and many are waiting to leave for Bangladesh as supply chains are cut off by the ongoing conflict.

“We hear gunshots coming from Myanmar from time to time. Some Rohingya Muslims want to flee here because they live in constant fear and without basic needs,” said Rohingya refugee Oli Hussain.

“Even we are living in fear because of the gunfire.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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