3 BOMB BLASTS ROCK MYANMAR’S RAKHINE STATE

YANGON— Three bombs rocked the city of Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state, early on Saturday, injuring a law enforcer, police said.

The authorities were still trying to identify whowas behind the bombings but it came only three days after a large bomb killed two bank employees and injured nearly two dozen other people in the northeastern city of Lashio, where several ethnic insurgent groups are fighting the Myanmar military.

Sittwe is the capital of Myanmar’s violence-torn Rakhine where Rohingya Muslim insurgent attacks last year sparked a massive military response that pushed 688,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh.

Many of the Rohingya recounted killings, rape and arson by Myanmar soldiers and police.

Exploded in backyard

One of the Sittwe bombs—which went off around 4:30 a.m.—exploded in the backyard of an outspoken state government secretary, Tin Maung Swe, police said.

He is one of the highest-ranking officials in the local administration. The other two bombs exploded near the high court and a land record office.

“There are suspects, but now is not the time to talk. Police are trying to make sure about the suspects by analyzing the structure of the bombs,” police spokesperson Colonel Myo Thu Soe, told Reuters by phone.

Unexploded bombs found

Myo Thu Soe also said three other unexploded hand-made bombs were found in the city.

The United Nations and the United States have decried the crackdown on Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, but the government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has blocked UN investigators and independent monitors from the conflict zone.

No one has claimed responsibility for the Saturday blasts.

The Twitter account of the Rohingya insurgents, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, did not post anything new as of Saturday midmorning.

Rakhine is also home to the Arakan Army, a Rakhine insurgent group.

Tensions have increased in Rakhine since mid-January, when Myanmar police shot dead seven demonstrators, while 12 people were injured in Mrauk U township in the northern part of the state, after a local gathering celebrating an ancient Buddhist Arakan kingdom-turned violent.