The Myanmar army said that a deadly artillery attack on an insurgent military academy had been intended only as a “warning” strike, local media reported, amid mounting tensions ahead of renewed negotiations for a ceasefire.
Twenty-three cadets were killed on Wednesday when a shell hit the training center on the outskirts of Laisa, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) capital on the border with China in Kachin State.
Colonel Than Aung, minister of border security in Kachin State, said the army was not aware that training was going on in the area and that the site was not the intended target, according to a report on The Irrawaddy Web site.
“We feel very sorry for this loss of life and we hope the peace process will not be affected,” he told a news conference in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina on Thursday.
La Nan, a spokesman for the KIA, denied the claim that the artillery attack was an accident.
INTENTIONAL
“The school is only about 6km away from them and they were able to pinpoint the target very easily,” he said by telephone. “We’re sure they attacked on the school on purpose.”
A senior military official told Reuters the attack — the deadliest since a ceasefire agreement broke down in 2011 — came amid rising tensions between the military and the KIA, which he said had shelled government soldiers building a road near Laisa.
The attack comes as representatives from various ethnic armed groups prepare to meet military officials for the next round of negotiations on a nationwide ceasefire, which the government has said it wants before next year’s election.
The latest round of peace talks between guerrilla groups and the semi-civilian government that took over in 2011 after nearly 50 years of military rule ended on Sept. 27 without agreement.
AUTONOMY
Most of the rebel groups have been battling for greater autonomy under a federal system, but the military has long stressed the need for strong, centralized government, as set down in a 2008 military-drafted constitution.
KIA Deputy Commander Gun Maw said that recent attacks were intended to pressure the KIA to sign an agreement with terms favourable to the military and could be a ploy to delay the elections.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of