Clashes between Burmese troops and ethnic Kokang rebels near the Chinese border have left 47 government soldiers dead and 73 wounded, state media said yesterday.
The Global New Light of Myanmar yesterday said that there have been more than 13 clashes in the past several days between government troops and Kokang rebels near Laukkai close to the border, with the government carrying out five airstrikes.
The number of rebel casualties was not immediately known.
It said the fighting has been serious enough for the government to inform China, which is concerned about the clashes because they force civilians to flee across the border.
The report said a Kokang renegade group led by former Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng (彭家聲) attacked military stations with the objective of capturing Laukai, capital of the self-administered Kokang zone, near the border more than 800km northeast of Yangon.
The newspaper quoted local residents as saying that Kokang rebels had infiltrated the area by working in plantations, and had carried out attacks using rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns.
Kokang guerrillas were formerly the main fighting force for the now-defunct Burmese Communist Party until a ceasefire was signed with the then-military government in 1989.
Pheung and his commanders fled Myanmar in 2009 after government forces raided a Kokang weapons factory.
Since coming to power in 2011, the government of Burmese President Thein Sein has been trying to strike peace agreements with about a dozen ethnic rebel groups that have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy.
It has preliminary ceasefire pacts with most, but clashes occasionally occur with Kachin, Shan and other ethnic armed groups.
The ethnic parties say many questions need to be settled before further pacts are signed, which the government had hoped to do next month.
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