2 killed in Bangladesh as fighting rages on Myanmar border: police

At least two people were killed in Bangladesh on Monday after mortar shells fired from Myanmar during clashes there landed in a village across the border, police said.

Parts of Myanmar near the 270-kilometre (167-mile) border with Bangladesh have seen frequent clashes since November when rebel Arakan Army fighters ended a ceasefire that had largely held since a 2021 coup.

“The two were killed at around 2:15pm (0815 GMT) in the firing at Jalpaitoli village,” local police chief Abdul Mannan told AFP.

Police said a Bangladeshi woman, named 48-year-old Hosne Ara, and an unnamed ethnic Rohingya man had been killed.

“They were sitting in the kitchen… when a mortar hit the place,” Ara’s daughter-in-law said, too distraught to give her name.

“She was serving lunch to the Rohingya man who was hired by the family for farm work when they were hit.”

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Sunday said that border police officers from neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state had “entered our territory for self-protection” ahead of advancing AA fighters.

A spokesman of the Border Guard Bangladesh, the country’s frontier forces, told AFP on Monday that “at least 95 border officers of Myanmar have crossed the border and taken shelter in Bangladeshi border posts”.

Aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its medics in Cox’s Bazar had on Sunday received 17 patients “following fighting at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border”.

“All the patients had gunshot wounds”, MSF said today. “Two were in life-threatening condition, and five were seriously injured.”

In October, an alliance including AA insurgents and other ethnic minority fighters launched a joint offensive across northern Myanmar, seizing vital trade hubs on the Chinese border.

Last month, the alliance announced a China-mediated ceasefire, but it does not apply to areas near the Bangladeshi and Indian border, where fighting continues.