World
Rebel group claims it captured Burmese command post, imprisoned hundreds of government soldiers
- The Arakan Army, a prominent and powerful ethnic rebel group combating Burma’s military junta, claims it has taken hundreds of soldiers prisoner after seizing Operational Command No. 15 headquarters in Buthidaung.
- Rebel forces have made significant advances against the military-run government, helmed by Min Aung Hlaing, in recent months.
- Hlaing’s forces have ruled over Burma since a successful 2021 coup ousted the government of democratically-elected State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.
A powerful ethnic minority armed group battling Burma’s army in the country’s west claimed Monday to have taken hundreds of government soldiers prisoner when it captured a major command post.
The Arakan Army, the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, has been on the offensive against army outposts in the western state of Rakhine — its home ground — for about six months.
The group said in a video statement posted on the Telegram messaging app that soldiers belonging to the military government’s Operational Command No. 15 headquarters in Rakhine’s Buthidaung township surrendered after a siege.
ETHNIC KAREN GUERRILLA FIGHTERS WITHDRAW FROM BURMESE BORDER TOWN ARMY LOST 2 WEEKS AGO
Buthidaung is about 240 miles southwest of Mandalay, Burma’s second-largest city.
The reported capture of the base could not be independently confirmed. Burma’s military government made no immediate comment, and the spokesperson of the Arakan Army did not respond to questions sent by The Associated Press.
The fight in Rakhine is part of the nationwide conflict in Burma that began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.
Despite its advantages in arms and manpower, Burma’s army has been on the defensive since October, when an alliance of three ethnic rebel groups launched an offensive in the country’s northeast.
The video released by the Arakan Army was described as having been made Saturday. It shows Arakan Army fighters guarding men in military uniforms and civilian clothes, some injured, as they walk through a field and down a roadside accompanied by women and children — families of soldiers often live at their posts.
A caption accompanying the video says it shows the deputy commander of the group and his troops after a “final assault in which (they) faced total defeat and surrendered.”
The video does not specify the total number of captured soldiers and their family members, but in one part about 300 men can be seen sitting in rows in an open field.
In a statement released Sunday, the Arakan Army said it captured the command post Thursday after attacking it for two weeks. It claimed another army post was seized the next day, along with others over the past two months.
The attackers captured “weapons, ammunition, military equipment and surrendered prisoners of war,” the statement said.
Some parts of the video released Monday show young men who appear to be members of the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Burma’s military has been accused of filling its depleted ranks with Rohingya men in Rakhine under the recently activated conscription law. The army has lost personnel to casualties, surrender and defections while facing increasingly tough opposition on the battlefield.
The Rohingya were the targets of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign incorporating rape and murder that saw an estimated 740,000 flee to neighboring Bangladesh as their villages were burned down by the army in 2017.
Ethnic Rakhine nationalists aligned with the Arakan Army were also among the persecutors of the Rohingya minority, but now the Arakan Army and the Rohingya are uneasy allies in opposition to the military government.
The Arakan Army, which seeks autonomy from Burma’s central government, is part of an alliance of ethnic minority armies that launched an offensive in October and gained strategic territory in Burma’s northeast bordering China.
Its success was seen as a major defeat for the military government, and boosted the morale of restive ethnic minorities as well as the pro-democracy resistance.
On Sunday, the Kachin Independence Army, another major ethnic armed group, claimed to have captured Sumprabum, a township in the northern state of Kachin.
World
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 815
Here is the situation on Sunday, May 19, 2024.
Fighting
- Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack overnight, Interfax news agency reported. The refinery is a private plant with a capacity of 4 million metric tonnes of oil per year, about one million barrels per day.
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Ukraine’s air force claimed it destroyed all 37 Shahed attack drones launched by Russia overnight. The regions targeted by the drones include Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and Kherson.
- The governor of Kharkiv said nearly 10,000 people had been forced to leave their homes since Russian forces launched a surprise ground attack on May 10. Russia claimed its military took control of another village, Staritsya, in the Kharkiv region near the Russian border.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said Russian shelling killed a 60-year-old woman and injured three other civilians in the northeast city of Vovchansk, 5km (3 miles) from the Russian border. A 59-year-old man was also injured in the village of Ukrainske.
- Russia said its forces shot down nine US ATACMS missiles over Crimea and at least 60 drones over Russian sovereign territory. Its forces also shot down a Tochka-U missile fired by Ukraine in Russia’s Belgorod region.
- Belgorod regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone attack injured a woman and a man in the village of Petrovka. The two were treated for shrapnel injuries.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged issues with staffing and “morale” within the country’s troops as he signed a mobilisation law that came into force on Saturday. Kyiv has lowered the age at which men can be drafted from 27 to 25 and tightened punishments for those who avoid the call-up.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating as a potential war crime a Russian air attack on a residential area of the regional capital, Kharkiv, in which six civilians were wounded, including a 13-year-old girl, 16-year-old male and an eight-year-old.
- Ukrainian officials accuse Russian soldiers in Vovchansk of using dozens of captured civilians as “human shields” to defend their command headquarters.
- Moscow denied deliberately targeting civilians even as thousands have been killed and injured since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
- Poland announced it would spend $2.5bn to fortify its eastern border, which includes Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
World
Ukraine investigates civilian injuries, battles rage in Kharkiv region
World
Philippine mayor accused of acting as Chinese asset amid investigation, tensions
A Philippine mayor faces accusations of acting as a Chinese asset amid a growing territorial dispute between the two countries.
“No one knows her. We wonder where she came from. That’s why we are investigating this, together with the Bureau of Immigration, because of the questions about her citizenship,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos told reporters this week.
Alice Guo, the 35-year-old mayor of Bamban, has found herself in the middle of a potential scandal over her origins and allegiances. She claimed to have grown up on a pig farm and had raised no concerns prior to a strange discovery made in her town this month, the BBC reported.
Law enforcement discovered that an online casino by the name of Philippine Offshore Gambling Operator (Pogo) in Bamban actually served as a front for a “scam center,” which had close to 700 workers — including over 200 Chinese nationals — who were posing as “online lovers.”
CHINA’S MILITARY MONITORS ROUTE TAKEN BY FILIPINO ACTIVISTS SAILING TOWARD DISPUTED SHOAL
The raid on the site in March rescued all of those workers, who claimed they were forced to work for the owners. The center tried to con victims with a “pig butchering” scam, in which a scammer adopted a fake identity to gain trust and then offered a romantic relationship to manipulate and steal from the victim.
Guo found herself entangled in the incident when it came to light that she owned half the land where Pogo was located.
LAWMAKERS BRAWL AS TAIWAN’S PARLIAMENT DESCENDS INTO CHAOS
The nation’s Senate brought her into a hearing to testify, and she claimed she had sold the land before she ran for mayor two years earlier, along with assets that included a helicopter and a Ford Expedition, both registered under her name but allegedly sold off before her campaign, the South China Morning Press reported.
Other irregularities raised concerns about her status. She only registered with the Commission on Elections to vote in Bamban one year before she ran and won as mayor.
She also admitted she only registered her birth certificate with local authorities at the age of 17 and gave few details about her background other than she was born in a house and home-schooled in a family compound where they raised pigs.
Senators accused Guo of providing “opaque” answers to their questions about her background, leading one senator to ask if Guo was a Chinese asset. She fired back that she was “not a coddler, not a protector of Pogos.”
AFTER DOZENS DIE IN FLOODS, INDONESIA SEEDS CLOUDS TO BLOCK RAINFALL
China and the Philippines have found themselves in renewed territorial disputes as Beijing tries to enforce control over waters around the Philippines, leading to clashes between Chinese Coast Guards and Filipino fishermen.
Last year saw a series of near clashes between the two coast guards near the Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippine authorities protested China’s use of a water cannon and military-grade lasers.
China established a claim to the Scarborough Shoal in 2012, after which the Philippines formally launched a protest that went before a United Nations-backed tribunal. A 2016 ruling went against China, rejecting Beijing’s claims on “historical grounds,” but Beijing rejected the arbitration and its outcome.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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