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Fighting between Myanmar military, ethnic rebels kills 32: UN rights office

Friday, 17 April 2020 1:47 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 17 April 2020 2:29 PM ]

This file photo, taken on August 25, 2019, shows Myanmarese soldiers walking along the Pyidaungsu highway road outside Kutkai in Shan State, Myanmar. (Photo by AFP)

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says at least 32 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in the restive Rakhine and Chin states in western Myanmar amid an escalation in fighting between the country’s military and ethnic rebels.

“Myanmar’s military has been carrying out almost daily airstrikes and shelling in populated areas, resulting in at least 32 deaths and 71 injuries since March 23, the majority [being] women and children, and they have also been destroying and burning schools and homes,” OHCHR spokesman Rupert Colville said at a news briefing in Geneva on Friday.

Myanmarese troops have been engaged in fighting with ethnic rebels in Rakhine and Chin for more than a year.

Colville said it had been “very difficult to get precise information from Rakhine on whether the [new] reported casualties are the result of targeting or were caught in the crossfire between the Arakan Army and Myanmar army.”

Two local officials and a resident told Reuters that shelling in Rakhine’s Kyauk Seik Village on Monday had left eight people dead, but the army dismissed reports about civilian casualties as “fabricated.”

The rebels, along with two other ethnic armed groups, announced a month-long ceasefire for April, citing the coronavirus epidemic, which has infected 85 people in Myanmar and killed four. But the army rejected the truce, with a spokesman saying a previous truce declared by the government had not been respected by the insurgents.

The Arakan Army consists of Buddhist rebels calling for greater autonomy for Rakhine. The state was the scene of an organized deadly crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims by the country’s military and Buddhist mobs.

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