BANGKOK (AFP): Fighters from a Myanmar ethnic armed group have seized another town along a strategic highway to China, the group and a resident said, in the latest setback for the embattled junta.
Northern Shan state has been rocked with fighting since the summer when an alliance of ethnic armed groups renewed an offensive against the military along the highway to China's Yunnan province.
The Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) captured the last remaining military base in the town of Hsipaw on Sunday after weeks of fighting, a spokesperson for the group told AFP Monday.
"We took all army bases and there is no more Myanmar army in the town," Lway Yay Oo said.
Hsipaw is normally home to around 20,000 people and sits on a highway from Myanmar's second city Mandalay to the China border, along which hundreds of millions of dollars of trade travels annually.
A Hsipaw resident who did not want to be named told AFP Tuesday that TNLA fighters had taken control of the town on Sunday.
"There is no more fighting in the town, but we are afraid of (military) airstrikes as we do not know when they will come," he said.
Locals were currently allowed to enter and leave the town but many were yet to return, he said.
The junta has not commented on the fighting in Hsipaw, and AFP was unable to confirm reports from the area, where internet access has been cut.
The TNLA's Lway Yay Oo said that 100 soldiers from the military had been "disarmed" since the TNLA launched its attack in August, without specifying what had happened to them.
She did not give details on TNLA or military casualties.
The TNLA is a member of the so-called "Three Brotherhood Alliance," which includes the Arakan Army (AA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Last October the alliance launched an offensive across northern Shan state, seizing swaths of territory and dealing the military its biggest blow since it came to power in a 2021 coup.
A Beijing-brokered ceasefire halted clashes in January, only for the alliance to resume attacks in June.
In August the MNDAA seized the town of Lashio, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) along the highway from Hsipaw, and home to a regional military command.
Lashio is the largest urban centre to fall to any of Myanmar's myriad ethnic minority armed groups since the military first seized power in 1962. - AFP
