MYITKYINA: At least 19 people were killed on Saturday in northern Myanmar when ethnic rebels attacked security force posts and a casino in an area bordering China, the most deadly flare-up in recent years that undercuts government efforts to win peace in the troubled country.

Rights defenders say clashes in the north have ramped up since January as the international community focuses on the Rohingya crisis in the west of the country.

“Nineteen [people] were killed in fighting,” an official with Myanmar’s military told AFP, adding that two dozen had been wounded.

TNLA spokesman Major Mai Aik Kyaw told AFP that they attacked joint military and militia posts and a casino just outside the Shan State town of Muse and on a road to Lashio.

Muse in Shan state is situated at a crossing between Myanmar and China’s Yunnan province, a major source of trade between the two countries.

Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi said ending Myanmar’s long history of clashes was her main priority after she took power in 2016, but she shares power with the military that fought the insurgencies for decades.

Suu Kyi managed to bring two ethnic groups into a ceasefire accord in February, adding to eight others who had signed the deal before she took office. Reverend Hkalam Samsun, chairman of the Kachin Baptist Convention, said the Kachin people were “disappointed”

with Suu Kyi. “She should stand firm with the people but she compromised with the military,” he said. “She ignored the ethnic issue.”

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2018