China summons Myanmar ambassador after aircraft bomb kills four in Yunnan
Beijing protests to Myanmar's ambassador after a missile dropped from a Myanmese aircraft leaves four dead and nine wounded
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 14 March, 2015, 2:38pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 14 March, 2015, 3:29pm
Reuters in Shanghai
Myanmese jet fighters. Photo: Facebook
China has summoned Myanmar’s ambassador for a meeting in Beijing after a bomb from a Myanmar aircraft fell in the southwestern border province of Yunnan and killed four people, China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.
Myanmar government forces have been battling rebels on the border with China since last month and Beijing has urged Myanmar to “lower the temperature”.
But Myanmar denied that any bomb from its forces had fallen in China and said the rebels might have fired into China to create “misunderstanding”.
China said the bomb from the Myanmar aircraft fell on Friday in a sugarcane field near the city of Lincang, in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. Nine people were wounded, state media reported.
The incident came days after a stray shell from Myanmar flattened a house in Chinese territory, prompting condemnation from Beijing.
Tens of thousands of people, many of them ethnic Chinese, have fled the fighting in northeastern Myanmar’s Kokang region into China.
China's Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin spoke to Myanmar's ambassador Thit Linn Ohn following the bombing. Photo: EPA
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin urged the Myanmar ambassador, Thit Linn Ohn, to investigate the aircraft bombing and to take steps to ensure the safety of the border area.
A spokesman for China’s air force said it had dispatched aircraft to patrol the border and step up the protection of China’s airspace, the Defence Ministry said.
An official in the office of the Myanmar president said Myanmar forces had kept the People’s Liberation Army fully informed of their air operations, which were carried out “strictly adhering to the information we told them”.
“The targets of all our aerial attacks were inside our territory,” the official, Zaw Htay, told reporters.
“It’s possible that those fighting with us purposely created these attacks with the intent of causing misunderstanding between China and us ... We plan to explain it to Chinese diplomats after summoning them.”
Kokang locals travel in a truck to a refugee camp, at China's border town with Myanmar, Nansan in February. Photo: Reuters
Myanmar has said Chinese mercenaries were fighting with the rebels, and it has urged Beijing to cooperate to prevent “terrorist attacks” being launched from Yunnan
China has denied that any attacks have been launched from its territory.
The rebels are from a group called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, which is led by ethnic Chinese commander Peng Jiasheng.
The MNDAA was formed from remnants of the Communist Party of Burma, a powerful China-backed guerrilla force that battled the Myanmar government until it splintered in 1989.
The group struck a truce with the government which lasted until 2009, when government troops took over their region in a conflict that pushed tens of thousands of refugees into China.
While the ethnic Chinese rebels have won some sympathy among the public in China, the Myanmar army, long feared at home for its suppression of democracy, has won favour from the Myanmar public for being seen to stand up to what many see as Chinese designs on Myanmar territory.
China and Myanmar share a 2,000km border.
