DKBA-SPDC fighting in Karen state spreads to other villages / ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ ျမ၀တီျမိဳ႕တြင္ DKBA နွင့္ နအဖ အစိုးရတုိ႕အၾကား ပစ္ခတ္မွဳမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ျပီး ရြာသူရြာသားမ်ား ထြက္ေျပးတိမ္ေရွာင္ေနရေၾကာင္း

Election related violence in Karen state spreads beyond Myawaddy (border town) to Toh Kaw Koe, Thin Ka Nyi Naung, Waw Lay Kee between Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) troops outside Myawaddy where the DKBA is posted. Around 2 pm, violent skirmishes took place between the SPDC and DKBA in Three Pagoda Pass. Approximately 1000 refugees are further fleeing from the Three Pagoda Pass area.

Already an estimated 5000 refugees have come across from the fighting in Myawaddy

BACKGROUND:
A group of defectors from the pro-junta Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) have taken control of a major border crossing and military and police posts in eastern Burma.

The head of the faction, Brig-Gen Na Kham Mwe, told DVB that the group had seized the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge entrance in Karen state’s Myawaddy, as well as police, army and intelligence offices.

“They [Burmese army] announced that they will shoot people who don’t vote [in today’s elections]. So people called on us to seize the town,” he said.

“In order to win votes in the elections, [the junta] is bullying and forcing people to vote. But the people want to boycott [the vote], so the soldiers are holding them at gunpoint and our troops had to intervene and take sides with the people.”

The breakaway DKBA group, comprised of former junta loyalists who refused to transform into a Border Guard Force, has some 1000 troops in Myawaddy, Na Kham Mwe said.

The DKBA now “has control of every location” and police and Burmese troops have withdrawn from the town, he added. Myawaddy acts as a major crossing point for trade between Thailand and Burma, but the checkpoint has been closed since July following a dispute between the two governments.
http://www.dvb.no/elections/dkba-renegades-seize-border-town/12665

ကရင္ျပည္နယ္၊ ျမ၀တီျမိဳ့မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မွဳမ်ားေျကာင့္ အျခားေသာရြာမ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ Toh Kaw Koe, Thin Ka Nyi Naung, Waw Lay Kee. ပ်ံ့ႏွံ့သြားခဲ့ေျကာင္း။