Aizawl: At least 276 Myanmar army personnel entered Mizoram’s Bandukbanga village, located on the India-Myanmar-Bangladesh trijunction, Wednesday afternoon, a senior state home department official said.
The village, also known as Bondukbangsora, is located in the state’s Lawngtlai district.
Initial reports from the district said the Myanmarese soldiers arrived at Bandukbanga around 4 pm with arms and ammunition, and were being taken care of by the Assam Rifles. They were reportedly taken to the Assam Rifles camp at Parva, near the trijunction.
Hundreds of Myanmarese soldiers have fled to Mizoram over the past few months amid a civil war in the country sparked by the 2021 military coup.
The latest batch of Myanmarese soldiers is said to have fled a camp situated across the border from Mizoram’s Parva village after militants from the Arakan Army (AA), an armed ethnic group that is part of the battle against military rule in Myanmar, captured it.
It is, however, not yet known if the camp is in Chin state’s Paletwa, which was reportedly overrun and captured by AA members Sunday.
So far, 636 Myanmar soldiers have fled their country after their camps were captured by armed ethnic organisations and local civilian militia groups.
Of these, 359 Myanmar soldiers have already been evacuated to their country.
Around 104 Myanmar army personnel were evacuated from different places in Mizoram to Moreh in Manipur by Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopters in three sorties in November, from where they were picked up by the Myanmarese military. Another 255 soldiers were picked up from the Lengpui airport near Aizawl by Myanmar air force cargo/transport planes earlier this month.
The home department official said the last batch of Myanmar soldiers who entered Mizoram are most likely to be brought to Aizawl, from where they will be airlifted by Myanmar air force transport planes to the country’s port town of Sittwe (Akyab), as happened to the earlier batches.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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