By Muktadir Rashid
Nearly 100 Myanmar junta border police have fled from Rakhine State to Bangladesh to escape intense fighting with the Arakan Army since 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, the headquarters of Bangladesh’s Border Guard force said on Monday.
They crossed the border from Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township to Bangladesh’s Bandarban district following intense fighting as the Arakan Army (AA) advanced from the south, officials said.
A Bangladeshi official said that about 100 more Myanmar border guard police were waiting inside Myanmar across from Ghumdum municipal division where a Myanmar junta gunship was shelling areas around them to prevent further attacks on their border outpost.
About 10 critically injured troops from the AA have also received medical treatment in separate Bangladeshi hospitals along the border, officials said.
The AA announced on Monday that nearly 60 regime troops fled to Bangladesh after its attacks on two regime border outposts in Maungdaw township near the Bangladeshi border on Sunday.
It said it has occupied Taungpyo Letya outpost and seized a large amount of ammunition and is trying to seize another outpost. Both sides sustained causalities, it added.
In mid-January, the AA seized the town of Paletwa in southern Chin State, about 12 miles from the Bangladesh border on the Kaladan River and continued advancing.
An India-backed infrastructure project being built on the Kaladan River aims to link India’s landlocked northeast to the Bay of Bengal.
Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, along with three other officials, meanwhile, had completed a low-key visit to Bangladesh on Sunday night when the fighting was occurring across the border in Rakhine State.
Many Myanmar troops have fled fighting in Rakhine and Chin states for safety in India in recent months.
Minister of Road Transport and Bridges Obaidul Quaderon on Sunday sought Chinese “intervention” to deescalate the conflict across the border, he told reporters.
Obaidul Quaderon, who is also the general secretary of the ruling Awami League, said the sound of gunfire had created panic among people who live near the border.
“That is why I have sought China’s intervention,” he told reporters at the Bangladesh Secretariat following a “courtesy call on” Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Yao Wen.
He said he sought Beijing’s help because it has close contacts with “Burmese authorities.”
Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters on Sunday that the Myanmar border guard police members sought assistance from Bangladesh for “self-defense” after one of their border camps was taken over, adding that they had been confined in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry is in talks with Myanmar to send the border guard police back, he said, adding that the Home Ministry has also “intensified our border security.”
Bangladesh border guard officials say they are seeing heavy firing along the border near Tumbru in Naikhyangchhari and that it is escalating along the southern part of the border opposite Ghumdum where Bangladesh built a highway connecting it to Myanmar.
Myanmar junta troops – both in uniform and civilian clothes – started crossing the border at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday and continued Monday morning, witnesses and Bangladeshi officials said.
The junta troops carried arms and ammunition, they said.
A senior Bangladesh border guard official said that they had disarmed the Myanmar soldiers and taken them into their custody as “intruders.”
Doctors Without Borders has treated at least 17 injured fighters from Rakhine State at its hospital in Bangladeh’s Cox Bazar, Jan Bohm, a spokesperson for the group, said on Monday.
“All the patients had gunshot wounds. Two were in life-threatening condition, and five were seriously injured. The MSF teams stabilized the patients, provided first wound care, and referred all the seven most seriously injured patients to other hospitals,” Bohm explained, adding that the medical aid group was monitoring the fighting and was ready “to provide care to any newly arrived patients from the border if needed.”
Panic gripped people living in the remote villages of Bandarban district’s Naikhyangchari area amidst continuous heavy firing and mortar shelling across the border in Myanmar from about 2 a.m. on Sunday. Residents said they saw artillery shells in the morning and that the fighting continued on Monday.
Video clips show Myanmar border guard police entering Bangladesh with their weapons.
Since launching Operation 1027 on Oct. 27, 2023, an alliance of three ethic armies, including the AA, has seized most of northern Shan State, including about 20 towns and vital trade routes with China.
The alliance halted its offensive in the second week of January after agreeing to a China-brokered ceasefire in northern Shan State with the military regime.
The AA did not, however, end the offensive it launched across northern Rakhine State and Paletwa Township in neighboring Chin State in November last year.