Over a hundred Myanmar army soldiers on Tuesday took refuge in Bangladesh alongside their paramilitary border guards amid escalated armed conflict between the government troops and rebel Arakan Army, officials here said.
Officials of the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) said 116 Myanmar troops fled their posts and crossed the border. This is the first time Myanmar’s regular army soldiers took refuge in frontier Cox’s Bazar district alongside personnel from the country’s paramilitary Border Guard Police (BGP) and some other government agencies.
Against the backdrop of armed conflict inside Myanmar, so far 229 BGP personnel, regular soldiers, immigration officials, policemen and members of other agencies entered Bangladesh, BGB spokesman Shariful Islam said. They were disarmed and kept in custody, he said.
Another official who was present at the scene said an identification process was underway to ascertain in detail the identities of the military and the paramilitary soldiers.
BGB officials said the 116 Myanmar soldiers and other officials crossed the border through the Rahamatbil frontier of the Ukhia sub-district on Tuesday morning amid escalated conflict on the other side of the border between the government troops and rebel Arakan Army insurgents.
The officials and witnesses said several of the 116 soldiers arrived with bullet wounds like the 113 other troops who fled to Bangladesh before them. Some of the soldiers were sent to different hospitals, including Chattogram Medical College Hospital, for treatment.
The influx of Myanmar government soldiers was reported for the third consecutive day. Dhaka has earlier said that it has communicated with Naypyidaw over the modus operandi for the troops’ repatriation.
Fierce fighting has been going on in Myanmar’s Rakhine state between the army and the rebel group Arakan Army.
The rebel group is believed to have captured the government military and other installations in bordering areas despite strafing on insurgents from army helicopters.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh foreign ministry on Tuesday summoned the Myanmar envoy over the escalated violence on the Myanmar side of the border that overnight killed two people in Cox’s Bazar and caused a fresh influx of more Burmese troops.
Officials said Myanmar ambassador to Dhaka Aung Kyaw Moe was summoned over the death of a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya man by a mortar shell on Monday and related developments on the border area.
Myanmar wing director general of the foreign ministry Miah Md Mainul Kabir strongly protested the incidents of violence in Rakhine state because of its spillover effect on Bangladesh, particularly the deaths of two people in Cox’s Bazar, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Foreign minister Hassan Mahmud later said a strong note of protest was handed over to the envoy given the casualties and disturbances in Bangladesh caused by the armed conflicts on the Myanmar side of the border.
We told him, this was completely unacceptable, Mahmud said. Cox’s Bazar’s deputy commissioner (administrative chief) Mohammad Shaheen Imran said three frontier sub-districts of Naikhangchhari, Teknaf and Ukhia were asked to prepare for evacuating people to safety given the escalated conflicts.
The upzaila (sub-district) administrations have been asked to launch the evacuation considering the field situation, he said.
However, witnesses said many residents by now left their homes in several villages to safer places as the sound of constant fighting on the other side of the border continued.
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