DHAKA: At least 89 people including12 members of the security forces were killed in Myanmar’s Rakhine state as militants staged a major coordinated attack on security forces.
The fighting on Friday (August 25) marked a major escalation in a simmering conflict in the northwestern state since last October, when similar attacks prompted a big military sweep beset by allegations of serious rights abuses.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, or “Faith Movement”, which instigated the October attacks, claimed responsibility for the early morning offensive, and warned of more attacks.
The treatment of approximately 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya has emerged as majority Buddhist Myanmar’s most contentious human rights issue as it makes a transition from decades of harsh military rule.
It now appears to have spawned a potent insurgency.
The situation in the state deteriorated early this month when security forces began a new “clearance operation” in a remote mountain area.
“The extremist Bengali insurgents attacked a police station in Maungdaw region in northern Rakhine state with a handmade bomb explosive and held coordinated attacks on several police posts at 1 a.m.,” a news team affiliated with the office of national leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in a statement, using the derogatory term “Bengali” to refer to Rohingya.
The Rohingya are denied citizenship and are seen by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite claiming roots in the region that go back centuries, with communities marginalized and occasionally subjected to communal violence.
The military counter-offensive in October resulted in some 87,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, where they joined many others who have fled from Myanmar over the past two decades or more.
The United Nations said Myanmar’s security forces likely committed crimes against humanity in the offensive that began in October.
The government news team listed 24 police posts that had come under attack, adding police and the military were continuing to fight the insurgents.
It said about 150 Rohingya attackers had attempted to break into a military base, prompting the army to fight back.
“They were planning to attack because we have found their camps, the caves and the bombs and masks inside the caves,” said Myanmar police headquarters spokesman Colonel Myo Thu Soe, referring to recent discoveries of what the government described as militant training camps.
Military sources in Rakhine State told Reuters they estimated the number of insurgents in the offensive was five-times the October attacks, with about 1,000 fighters likely to have taken part.
BDST: 1044 HRS, AUG 26, 2017
SI
