The queue for cooking oil stretches down a Yangon street. Householders turn up before dawn to fill a plastic bottle at a subsidized rate in Myanmar’s commercial capital – the latest evidence of a tanking economy.
Thailand has detained and deported more than 144,000 Myanmar citizens over the past three months, its labor ministry said, in a crackdown aimed at weeding out “job seekers” who use the turmoil in their country as an excuse to seek opportunities in Thailand, a Thai police chief said.
Myanmar junta forces hunting insurgents raided a reporter’s home killing him, another reporter and two other people, one of whom was a member of a rebel group, associates of the victims, including a former employer, told Radio Free Asia.
Twenty-six members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority drowned when their boat capsized as they were trying to flee to Bangladesh, witnesses said, an accident likely to compound fears that the largely Muslim minority is facing a new round of genocide.
The camp has a basic clinic and a barebones school sitting on a hillside with bamboo classrooms topped by tin roofs where children can continue their education despite the circumstances.
Rebel forces in central Myanmar captured nine junta army posts and opened a new offensive in three townships under junta control, they announced on Monday, in the latest setback for the ruling military after a string of battlefield losses since late last year.
Myanmar authorities under the ruling junta are now preventing young adults who want to get jobs abroad from leaving the country via Yangon’s international airport, people with knowledge of the situation said.
Approximately 5,000 minority Rohingya Muslims attempting to flee from this week’s fighting in western Myanmar have been waiting for several days near the Naf River for an opportunity to cross into Bangladesh, residents said.
Landmines and unexploded ordnance are posing a greater threat to residents of western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where intense fighting has caused junta troops to lay more landmines near their outposts.
Heavy rain at the height of the monsoon is flooding large parts of northern Myanmar, destroying hundreds of homes and displacing tens of thousands of people, relief workers told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.