Rebels Claim Copter Attack in Myanmar
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Version 0 of 1. YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Ethnic Kachin rebels battling Myanmar’s army in the country’s north said they shot down a government helicopter, but the army denied the claim, saying Saturday that engine failure caused the crash. The Kachin guerrillas announced that they shot down the helicopter late Friday as heavy fighting raged. Myanmar’s deputy information minister and presidential spokesman, U Ye Htut, confirmed on his Facebook page that a government helicopter had crashed, but he said engine failure was to blame. He said the accident was an “emergency landing.” It was the first helicopter crash since the military started carrying out airstrikes against the Kachin in December. Both the government and the guerrillas have made misleading statements in the past about the fighting, which is in a remote area difficult for independent observers to enter. If the helicopter was shot down, it would complicate efforts to de-escalate the fighting. Mr. Ye Htut wrote that a helicopter that left the government’s air base in Kachin State’s capital, Myitkyina, “to carry out administrative activities made an emergency landing due to engine trouble, 20 miles south of Myitkyina.” “Search and rescue continues and casualties cannot be immediately confirmed,” he wrote. The area where he said the helicopter crashed was not in the vicinity of most of the main fighting. Another senior official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to release military information, said two pilots were on board. The Kachin, like Myanmar’s other ethnic minorities, have long sought greater autonomy from the central government. They are the only major ethnic rebel group that has not reached a truce with President Thein Sein’s elected government, which came to power in 2011 after almost five decades of military rule. Intermittent fighting increased last month when the rebels rejected a government demand that they allow supply convoys to reach an army base. |