YANGON: Around a dozen ethnic rebels have been killed in a firefight with Myanmar troops and a further eight captured after renewed clashes in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border, state media said on Sunday.

Myanmar’s military has for several days carried out airstrikes and ground assaults on rebel positions in retaliation for an attack last week on a key army headquarters in the Kokang region.

That assault, on the main city of Laukkai, left dozens of soldiers dead in some of the heaviest recent clashes between government forces and rebel groups anywhere in a nation riddled with ethnic insurgencies.

On Saturday morning government troops clashed with Kokang “renegade groups “who had “infiltrated” Laukkai, state-run the Global New Light of Myanmar reported.

After fighting ended in the evening the military seized nearly 100 “small weapons... and 13 bodies of the armed group,” the report said, adding a further eight seriously wounded rebels were detained.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2015

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