[Myanmar] Kia Hq Suffers Fierce Air Attack

[News_Editor]

A Kachin girl living in Malaysia holds up a banner to protest Burmese government troops fighting ethnic rebels in northernmost Burma. (Photo: Reuters)

Four jet fighters and two helicopter gunships launched heavy attacks against Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), by the Sino-Burmese border on Friday morning, according to rebel sources.

KIA spokesman La Nan told The Irrawaddy that the aerial attack against their base began at around 9 am and has lasted until midday. Casualty numbers are not yet known.

La Nan said that he believed the order for a fierce assault and the use of jet fighters must have come directly from officials at union-level government as local officers did not have the authority to order the deployment.

This latest assault comes after one man was killed and three people wounded—two seriously—during Burmese shelling of locations close to Lajayang, a KIA outpost about 10 miles (16 km) from Laiza, on Thursday morning.

The shells were likely fired from Hang Kai, about five miles (eight kilometers) range from where the devices landed, according to KIA officials who arrived at Laiza Hospital.

The KIA and Burmese government have been engaged in an escalating conflict since June 2011 when a 17-year ceasefire between the two sides collapsed, with around 100,000 people having been made homeless to date by the fighting, which has largely been on-off skirmishes at scattered outposts across the mountainous, resource-rich northern region of Burma.

Source: Irrawaddy.org