Thousands flee fresh clashes in northern Myanmar, says UN

Biggest concern is for the safety of civilians: pregnant women, the elderly, small children and people with disabilities. We must ensure these people are protected.” MARK CUTTS, UN official

YANGON: Thousands of people have fled renewed fighting between Myanmar’s army and ethnic insurgents in the country’s remote north, a United Nations official said, as a longsimmering conflict intensifies.

More than 4,000 people have been displaced in the country’s northernmost state of Kachin near the border with China in the last three weeks, Mark Cutts, head of the UN’S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP. The numbers do not include some 15,000 people who have fled since the beginning of the year, and upwards of 90,000 residing in internally displaced persons camps in both Kachin and Shan states since a ceasefire between the government and the powerful Kachin Independence Army broke down in 2011.

“We have received reports from local organisations saying that there are still many civilians who remain trapped in conflictaffected areas,” Cutts said of the recent clashes. OCHA has been unable to verify reports that civilians have been killed in the fighting. A Myanmar government spokesman could not be reached for comment. In addition to the Rohingya Muslim crisis in the western part of mainly Buddhist Myanmar, the country’s conflicthit north has also played host to clashes involving other ethnic minorities, which rarely make headlines.

The Kachin, who mostly live in the country’s northernmost state of the same name, make up some of the more than 6 percent of Christians in Myanmar, the second largest religious group after Buddhists, according to census figures.

Myanmar’s border areas have been unstable since its independence from British colonial rule in 1948, hosting a dizzying array of insurgencies, local militias, and drug-running operations.