Bomb-maker killed, four hurt in Myanmar

Jan 13, 2008
The Straitstimes

YANGON - ONE person has been killed and four wounded in a bomb blast in central Myanmar, which authorities blamed on an ethnic rebel group battling the military government, state-run press reported on Sunday.

A 25-year-old suspected bomb-maker was killed late on Saturday when the device went off prematurely near a circus in Bago Division, north of the main city Yangon, the government-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

The newspaper blamed the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been waging a nearly six-decade long insurgency, and said that a gun, ammunition and explosives were recovered from the body of the dead man.

A 28-year-old man was arrested at the scene, the paper said, while four bystanders - three women and a four-year-old boy - were slightly wounded.

A small bomb killed a woman on Friday near the railway station serving the remote new capital of Naypyidaw.

The newspaper said she was also with the KNU and had been killed by accident while attempting to detonate the bomb.

The paper claimed that an unnamed 'major group from abroad that is desirous of practising hegemony over Myanmar provided terrorist insurgent saboteurs with cash and related equipment with the intention of harming the public'.

Myanmar's military regime has previously accused exiled dissident groups and the United States - one of the junta's fiercest critics - of encouraging unrest and trying to install a puppet government.

Myanmar, under military rule since 1962, has signed ceasefires with 17 ethnic armed groups. The Karen are one of the few yet to sign a deal.

The KNU once held a broad swathe of territory near the Thai border, but lost most of their ground after the military captured a key stronghold in 1995.

In December, the group accused the military government of stepping up an offensive in Karen regions, and said the junta was waging a 'genocidal war' against Karen civilians. -- AFP