New Delhi: An entire Myanmar army battalion in the country’s northeast surrendered to rebel forces, a spokesperson for the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) said on Wednesday (November 15) according to news agency AP.A total of 261 people – 127 soldiers and 134 of their family members – surrendered from an infantry battalion in Myanmar’s Shan state, the spokesperson reportedly said, adding that the rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance expects to capture Laukkiang, the area’s major city.Reuters reported the Arakan Army (AA), which along with the MNDAA and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army forms the Three Brotherhood Alliance, as saying on Wednesday that at least 28 policemen had surrendered to it and that it arrested 10 soldiers.Neither AP nor Reuters was able to independently verify the spokespersons’ statements.The three ethnic minority armed groups launched an offensive against Myanmar’s military dictatorship on October 27 and have made progress against it, saying that over 200 soldiers and police surrendered to them between October 31 and November 14, AP reported.Since October 27, Myanmar’s army has lost nine towns where its battalions had been based for decades, Myanmar newspaper The Irrawady reported on Wednesday.Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for Myanmar’s military leadership, said that the rebel groups were “destroying the whole country” and called claims of captured military posts were “propaganda”, Reuters reported.“The enemies retreated after they lost soldiers. We are trying to combine small posts strategically,” Reuters reported him as also saying.But the Myanmar military has admitted to losing control of some towns in Shan state, and the country’s President Myint Swe said last week that the country may face an existential threat from the rebel action.“If the government does not effectively manage the incidents happening in the border region, the country will be split into various parts,” he said according to DW.Apart from the clashes in Myanmar’s northeast, the AA has also launched attacks against the military in the western Rakhine state, where the rebel group reportedly controls many towns and villages and where the military launched a brutal counterinsurgency operation in 2017, driving hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas across the border into Bangladesh.As of Wednesday, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that “more than 200,000 people” were displaced by the ongoing fighting across the country, news agency AFP reported.At least 75 civilians have been killed and 94 people wounded, AFP reported, citing the UN agency.Around 40 Myanmar soldiers also crossed into Mizoram due to the fighting and Indian defence authorities said they sent 39 soldiers back to Myanmar, The Hindu reported.The decision to send them back came after the camp in which the soldiers had been staying came under attack from ethnic armed groups aligned with the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar.
