Dhaka, Feb 6 (EFE).- Bangladesh summoned the Myanmar ambassador on Tuesday to protest the escalating border crisis, as intensifying fighting between rebels and the Myanmar military killed at least two people in Bangladesh.
Mia Mohammad Mainul Kabir, a foreign ministry director general, told EFE that Ambassador U Aung Kyaw Moe was summoned to a state guest house in the morning to lodge Bangladesh’s protests over the events at the border. “We handed him a protest note.”
A Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya man were killed when a shell from Myanmar hit a bordering village in Bangladesh on Monday, amid heavy fighting between a rebel group and Myanmar forces.
According to Shariful Islam, a spokesperson for Border Guard Bangladesh, over 230 people, including civil and military officers, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh due to the ongoing conflict. “The BGB disarmed them and took them to a safe shelter.”
Islam told EFE that seven members of Myanmar’s border police entered Bangladesh on Tuesday.
Some of the injured Myanmar nationals from the fighting are receiving treatment in different health facilities in Bangladesh, including those run by the Geneva-based non-profit Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
MSF spokesperson Jan Bohm told EFE that they treated 25 people in the past three days, but most of them have either been discharged or referred to other hospitals.
Authorities in Bangladesh have stated that the situation remains tense in the bordering area. “We have been asking people to go to safer places from the border for the past few days. Some listened to our requests, some did not,” Shah Mujahid Uddin, the administrative head of the bordering Bandarban district, told EFE.
Mujahid Uddin added that they have kept shelters ready for people who don’t have places to go.
The government declared five schools shut indefinitely on Monday due to fighting between the ethnic Arakan Army (AA) and Myanmar forces across the border.
The entry of Myanmar border guards has alarmed Bangladesh authorities, who on Sunday ordered security forces to block movement on the porous border between the two countries.
Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, said several hundred people, mostly from the Chakma tribe, have reportedly gathered on the Myanmar side of the border to enter Bangladesh.
“Rohingya refugees are also concerned about the safety of their relatives in Myanmar, but so far, no Rohingyas or Chakmas have entered Bangladesh afresh,” Rahman told EFE.
Bangladesh is home to over a million Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar, mostly after a crackdown by the Myanmar military in August 2017.
Fighting has been ongoing between the rebel Arakan Army and Myanmar forces in Myanmar’s Rakhine state for weeks.
As part of the Brotherhood Alliance, the rebel group Arakan Army launched a joint offensive, code-named ‘Operation 1027,’ against the Myanmar Army on Oct. 27, though the region near the Bangladesh border has remained volatile for years.
A military coup on Feb. 1, 2021, plunged Myanmar into a deep political, social, and economic crisis and unleashed a spiral of violence with new civilian militias that have exacerbated the guerrilla war that the country has been experiencing for decades. EFE
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