Two Killed in Bangladesh as Fighting Rages on Myanmar Border

Mon Feb 05 2024
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TUMBRU: At least two individuals were killed in Bangladesh on Monday after mortar shells fired from Myanmar during clashes there landed in a village across the border, police said as reported by AFP.

Parts of Myanmar close to the 270-kilometer border with Bangladesh have seen frequent clashes since November when rebel Arakan Army fighters ended a ceasefire that had largely held since a 2021 coup.

Local police chief Abdul Mannan said that two people were killed at around 2:15 pm (0815 GMT) in the firing at Jalpaitoli village.

Police said a Bangladeshi woman, 48-year-old Hosne Ara, and an unnamed ethnic Rohingya man had been killed, according to AFP.

They were sitting in the kitchen when a mortar hit the place, “Ara’s daughter-in-law said, too distraught to give her name.

She said that Ara was serving lunch to the Rohingya man who was hired by the family for farm work when they were hit.

Myanmar’s Border Police Officers Enter Bangladesh

Asaduzzaman Khan, Bangladesh Home Minister, on Sunday, said that border police officers from neighboring Myanmar’s Rakhine state had crossed the border into our territory for self-protection ahead of advancing AA fighters.

A spokesman of the Border Guard Bangladesh, the country’s frontier forces, said on Monday that at least ninety-five border officers of Myanmar have crossed the border and taken shelter in Bangladeshi border posts.

Aid agency Doctors Without Borders said its medics in Cox’s Bazar had on Sunday received seventeen patients following fighting at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

It said that all the patients had gunshot wounds. Two were in life-threatening condition, and five were seriously wounded.

In October, an alliance including AA insurgents and other ethnic minority fighters started a joint offensive across northern Myanmar, occupying vital trade hubs on the Chinese border.

In January, the alliance announced a China-mediated ceasefire, but it does not apply to areas close to the Bangladeshi and Indian border, where fighting continues.

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