Myanmar: 13 government soldiers die in rebel attack

YANGON

Three rebels and 13 government soldiers died and 28 others were wounded during clashes in eastern Myanmar on Wednesday, according to local media.

The Irrawaddy reported Thursday that the Ministry of Information had said five small groups of soldiers from the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) had attacked the army in the former rebel stronghold of Laukkai.

The 28 who were injured have been transferred to an army hospital, it added.

The rebels denied Wednesday that the army seized narcotics from their members.

“We’re having major fighting, how could we carry out illegal drug trade or grow opium while we are still hiding in the jungle?” the Irrawaddy reported MNDAA spokesman Htun Myat Lin as saying.

Over 60,000 refugees have entered China since fighting broke out between government forces and the MNDAA on Feb. 9.

Dozens of troops on both sides have died but the full extent of the toll on civilians remains unknown.

The MNDAA, led by the ethnically Chinese Peng Jiasheng, was formed out of the China-backed Communist Party of Burma, which disbanded in the late 1980s.

The latest round of fighting began after Peng's troops entered the Kokang self-administered region early last month, having been forced from the area by an army offensive in 2009.

Myanmar’s government has sought to shift blame onto the ethnic rebels after being accused of an aerial bombing that killed five civilians March 13 across the country’s eastern border on Chinese soil.

The Chinese government is convinced that Myanmar’s air force dropped the bomb, which also wounded eight people when it struck a sugarcane field in Yunnan province.