Junta looking to retake control of border outpost lost to AA, state media reports

By DMG 02 Sep 2022

DMG Newsroom
2 September 2022, Maungdaw 

The junta-controlled Myanma Alin newspaper reported on Friday that the regime is trying to reoccupy a regime outpost near the Bangladeshi border that the Arakan Army (AA) seized on August 31. 

“Security forces of the State Administration Council (SAC) are taking necessary actions to retake control of a border guard police outpost near Milepost No. 40 on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border in northern Maungdaw,” said the report. 

The report accused the AA of using excessive force to conduct a surprise attack on the border guard police outpost, ignoring the invitation of the SAC, the regime’s governing body, to peace talks. Some border guard police died in the attack, the report added. 

The junta mouthpiece blamed the AA for the attack “while the regime is making every effort to achieve internal peace.” 

The AA has said it occupied the border guard police outpost in retaliation for the junta’s fatal shelling of Kin Seik village in Mrauk-U on August 28, in which three villagers, including a child, and nine others were injured. 

Military tensions have been running high across Arakan State, and clashes have been occurring with a degree of regularity since early August in Maungdaw and Chin State’s Paletwa Township, according to AA spokesman U Khaing Thukha. 

After two years of fighting from late 2018 to November 2020, the Myanmar military and Arakan Army reached an unofficial ceasefire. But the peace pact has appeared on the verge of total collapse for weeks amid months of escalating military tensions and a series of clashes between the two sides across multiple Arakan State townships, and in Paletwa Township.