Bangladesh summons Myanmar envoy over border clashes

Members of Border Guard Bangladesh stand watch at the Ghumdhum point on Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh in this file photo from 2017. - Reuters

DHAKA: Bangladesh summoned neighbouring Myanmar's ambassador on Tuesday (Feb 6) to protest the escalating border violence that killed two people on the Bangladeshi side as fighting between Myanmar's rebel forces and its junta regime intensifies.

A Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya man were killed and a child was injured when a mortar shell from Myanmar hit a border district in Bangladesh on Monday, as junta forces try to quell a bloody rebellion.

Ambassador Aung Kyaw Moe was summoned to receive Bangladesh's protest note over the casualties in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud told reporters in Dhaka.

"It's their internal conflict. But we placed a strong protest as mortal shells are landing on Bangladesh territory, killing people. This is completely unacceptable," Mahmud said.

Since mounting a coup against an elected government in 2021, Myanmar's junta is facing its biggest challenge, trying to contain an uprising which has seen allied anti-junta groups backed by a pro-democracy parallel government seize control of several military posts and towns.

At least 264 Myanmar border guards and police, some of them wounded, have fled to Bangladesh over the last few days, Shariful Islam, a spokesman for Bangladesh's Border Guard said on Tuesday.

"More than 100 entered today to escape violence, eight of them with critical injuries are being treated at different hospitals," Islam said.

The sound of gunfire could be heard from across the Myanmar border in Bangladesh's southeastern district of Cox's Bazar, where nearly one million members of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in bamboo-and-plastic hut camps after fleeing a military crackdown there in 2017.

Several hundred people, mostly the Chakma ethnic group and some Rohingya from Myanmar, have gathered on the border to enter Bangladesh, said Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh's refugee relief and repatriation commissioner based in Cox's Bazar.

Citing a deteriorating security situation, India on Tuesday advised its citizens against travel to Myanmar's Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh. - Reuters