By AFP
YANGON — At least 160 people have died in around three months of clashes between the military and ethnic armed groups in Shan State, a senior army official said Tuesday.
More than 20,000 people have been displaced since fighting between the army and several armed ethnic groups erupted near Muse on the Chinese border in late November.
Giving the army’s first comprehensive toll from the fighting, the chief of the general staff said 74 soldiers, 15 police, 13 government militia fighters and 13 civilians have died in the violence.
“We have 45 dead bodies of enemies and arrested four,” General Mya Tun Oo told reporters in the capital, Naypyidaw.
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He said hundreds more ethnic armed group members may have been killed based on pictures of a mass funeral.
The update comes as Myanmar’s government prepares to hold the second round of peace talks aiming to end the decades-long conflicts rumbling across the country’s borderlands.
Days earlier eight ethnic armed groups signed a statement saying they would never agree to the government’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement.
