Myanmar rebels storm police base in Rakhine state

YANGON: Arakan Army rebels overran a police base in Rakhine state, killing two officers and one of their wives, the Myanmar government said, as fresh fighting broke out in a historic Buddhist temple town popular with tourists.

The Information Ministry on Wednesday said around 200 insurgents stormed a police headquarters in Mrauk U before being repelled, but that they abducted four women and three children as they left.

“According to information from the Myanmar police force, the AA (committed an act of) terrorism by attacking a family dormitory and taking unrelated family members like wives and children,” the ministry said in a post on its website.

Arakan Army spokesman Khine Thu Kha said rebels had attacked a police outpost in Mrauk U – where clashes in March wounded six people – but denied they had killed or abducted any civilians.

He denied the site had any dormitory, saying rather that heavy weapons were stored there.

“They were shooting from that camp and so it affected the people. So the Rakhine army cleared that. There were many casualties on the Myanmar military side.”

Rakhine came to global attention in 2017 when the Myanmar army drove about 730,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims from the state across the border into neighbouring Bangladesh, following attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts.

More recently, the military has been battling another armed rebel group, the Arakan Army, which draws recruits mostly from the ethnic Rakhine population, who are mainly Buddhists, and is fighting for greater autonomy for the western state.

Government warplanes began strikes on Mrauk U late on Tuesday night, according to two residents, who said a one-year-old child was hospitalised.