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Air raid by Burma kills four in China | |
(2 months later) | |
China has summoned Burma’s ambassador for a meeting after a bomb from a Burmese aircraft fell in Chinese territory and killed four people, the foreign ministry in Beijing said on Saturday. | |
Burmese government forces have been battling rebels in the country’s north-east, on the border with China, since last month and China has urged Burma to “lower the temperature”. | |
The bomb fell on Friday in a sugarcane field near the city of Lincang, in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan. Nine other people were wounded, state media reported. | |
The incident came a few days after a stray shell from Burma flattened a house in Chinese territory, prompting condemnation from Beijing. | |
Chinese vice-minister for foreign affairs Liu Zhenmin urged the Burmese ambassador, Thit Linn Ohn, to investigate the bombing and take steps to ensure the safety of the border area. | |
Tens of thousands of people, many of them ethnic Chinese, have fled the fighting in Burma’s Kokang region into Yunnan. | |
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 out of some of the remnants of the Communist party of Burma, a powerful China-backed guerrilla force that battled the Burmese government until it splintered in 1989. | |
The MNDAA 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. | |
Burma has accused Chinese mercenaries of fighting with the rebels, and has urged China to co-operate in preventing “terrorist attacks” being launched from Chinese territory. | |
China has denied that any attacks into Burma have come from its side. | |
China and Burma share a border 1,250 miles long (2,000km). | |
Shen Jinke, a spokesman for China’s air force, said in a defence ministry statement on Saturday that the air force had dispatched aircraft to patrol the border and would step up activities to protect the sovereignty of China’s airspace. |