19-5-2024 (YANGON) A formidable armed ethnic faction in Myanmar claimed victory on Sunday, asserting control over a town in the western state of Rakhine after weeks of intense fighting. The Arakan Army (AA) denied accusations of targeting the Muslim-minority Rohingya community during its offensive.
Khine Thu Kha, a spokesman for the AA, declared that the group’s soldiers had captured Buthidaung, a town near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, marking another battlefield setback for the ruling junta embroiled in conflicts with opposition forces on multiple fronts.
“We have conquered all the bases in Buthidaung and also took over the town yesterday,” Khine Thu Kha told Reuters over the phone.
However, some Rohingya activists levelled accusations against the AA, alleging that the group targeted the community during the assault on Buthidaung and surrounding areas, forcing many to flee for their safety.
“AA troops came into downtown, forced the people to leave their homes and started torching houses,” Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition advocacy group, told Reuters, citing what he claimed were eyewitness accounts. “While the town was burning, I spoke with several people I have known and trusted for years. They all testified that the arson attack was done by the AA.”
Reuters could not independently verify the conflicting narratives. Attempts to seek comment from a junta spokesman were unsuccessful.
The Rohingya, a persecuted minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades, have faced a harrowing ordeal. After escaping a military-led crackdown in 2017, nearly a million of them now reside in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.
Myanmar has been engulfed in turmoil since the 2021 military coup, which paved the way for the rise of resistance forces fighting alongside long-established ethnic minority rebel groups.
The conflict has intensified since October when an alliance of ethnic armies, including the AA, launched a major offensive near the Chinese border, seizing vast swaths of territory from the better-armed junta, presenting its most formidable challenge since seizing power.
According to one estimate, the junta has lost control of around half of its 5,280 military positions, including outposts, bases, and headquarters.
The AA’s Khine Thu Kha claimed that junta aircraft and Muslim insurgent groups aligned with the military had set fire to parts of Buthidaung, which had a population of around 55,000 people, according to the most recent government census available from 2014.
“The burning of Buthidaung is due to the air strikes from the junta’s jet fighter before our troops entered the town,” he said.
Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya civil society activist and a deputy minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, stated that Rohingya residents had been asked by the AA to leave Buthidaung, but they responded that they had nowhere to go, leaving them trapped when the offensive occurred.
“Since about 10 pm last night up to this early morning, Buthidaung town had been burning, and now only ashes remain,” he told Reuters.
Rohingya residents fled to the fields, and there may have been casualties, he added.
