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Asia Pacific|Myanmar Rebels Claim Regional Military Base in Major Victory
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/world/asia/myanmar-rebels-lashio.html
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The seizure of the military’s northeastern command post gives the resistance control of a city and airport on a crucial trade corridor to China.
Aug. 5, 2024, 8:06 a.m. ET
A rebel army in Myanmar announced this weekend that it had overrun a regional military base and seized a strategic city and airport near the border with China. The victory is likely to be the most significant yet for a patchwork of rebel armies that have challenged the country’s junta.
On Monday, Myanmar’s military rulers signaled that the insurgents had, in fact, made a major advance, saying the junta had lost contact with the base, the northeastern command in the city of Lashio in Shan State.
The rulers have been on the defensive for months as a broad alliance of rebel militias and pro-democracy groups has made inroads across large swaths of the country. Suffering repeated losses of territory and troops, the junta in recent months has enforced a mandatory draft.
But the fall of a regional military headquarters — one of 14 in Myanmar and home to thousands of government soldiers — would be a major defeat for the junta, which has been on a war footing for decades.
The victory, after weeks of fighting, was claimed by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. On Saturday, the group’s fighters, who are from the Kokang ethnic Chinese minority, posted photos of themselves posing at the gates of the base. The group also claimed that it had in its custody three senior officers, all generals from the base.
“Senior officers closely supervised and participated in the fighting until 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 3, but contact was lost thereafter,” Zaw Min Tun, the military spokesman, said in an announcement on Monday. “Unconfirmed reports indicate that some senior officers have been captured.”
