According to sources, 106 Burmese paramilitary border guards have already deserted their posts and sought safety in Bangladesh over the previous two days, with at least two persons killed today when mortar shells fired from Myanmar landed in a village across the border.
“One of the two slain people is a Bangladeshi woman while the other is a Rohingya man. They were killed at Japaitali area near the border,” deputy commissioner of bordering Bandarban Shah Mujahid Uddin told reporters.
According to police, the unidentified 58-year-old male day laborer from the ethnic Rohingya community was being served lunch by 50-year-old Hosne Ara, the wife of local market dealer Badshah Mia, when the shell struck, instantly killing them both.
Meanwhile, officials from Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) reported that 11 additional paramilitary Border Guard Police from Myanmar had entered the border late on Monday, while intense gunfights between government forces and the insurgent Arakan Army continued across the border.
“One hundred six BGP personnel are now in our custody. Most of them brought with them their weapons. We have disarmed them,” a BGB spokesman told reporters adding the Myanmar border guards’ weapons were kept at BGB cache.
According to him, the BGP men crossed into Bangladesh at the Tombru border in the Ghumdhum union of Bandarban. Several of them had gunshot wounds and were receiving treatment at various clinics, including medical facilities in the camps for Rohingya people in Teknaf and Cox’s Bazar.
Several wounded soldiers had critical injuries, according to Cox’s Bazar medical personnel.
In order to assist their government’s ground forces in fighting rebel militants in Rakhine state, officials and inhabitants of nearby villages said that military helicopters from Myanmar continued to bomb the Tombru region on the Myanmar side of the border.
The border between Bangladesh and Myanmar’s Rakhine state is roughly 270 kilometers (167 miles) long. Since November, when fighters from the Arakan Army broke a truce that had been mainly in place since a coup in 2021, there have been several battles along this border.
