By Joshua Carroll

YANGON, Myanmar 

Myanmar’s military has announced it has taken “total control” of the northeastern Kokang region following weeks of intense fighting with ethnic rebels.

The state-run Union Daily newspaper said Thursday that the military called on the rebel Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) to lay down its arms, claiming government forces had occupied all strategic hilltop posts in the small region along the Chinese border.

More than 200 people have died and hundreds of others been wounded since fighting broke out in Kokang, northern Shan state, on Feb. 9, when the MNDAA launched surprise attacks on Myanmar army positions. Those figures do not include civilian casualties.

Tens of thousands have fled across the border to China’s Yunnan province or escaped to other parts of Myanmar.

Last week, as fighting in Kokang continued to rage, negotiators sat down in Yangon for the seventh official round of peace talks between the government and a coalition of 16 ethnic rebel groups -- which does not include the MNDAA.

President Thein Sein has promised a nationwide peace deal as a cornerstone of a political reform process that began in 2011, when the ruling junta installed a new government staffed by former generals. 

But repeated fighting in various places along Myanmar’s troubled borderlands has dulled hopes that the country’s decades-long civil wars might soon end.

On Wednesday night, a Myanmar military compound in Lashio, around 150 kilometers southwest of Kokang, was struck by two mortar shells.

Police told local media they did not yet know who was responsible.