Peninsula Wednesday, April 23, 2008
YANGON • Myanmar’s ruling junta has blamed an armed exiled student group for two recent bomb blasts in Yangon and has released a security camera photograph of a suspect, state media reported yesterday.
Two small separate explosions went off late Sunday, damaging cars in downtown areas near Yangon city hall and the Traders Hotel, but causing no injuries.
“It is learnt that the perpetrations were committed by a man dubbed Mone Dine who was sent into the nation after attending explosive courses conducted by Vigorous Burma Student Warriors (VBSW) in the other country,” the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said, without naming the country. The suspect was “about 5.6 feet tall with shoulder length hair, fair complexion, thin face and about 30 years of age.”
The English-language daily ran an accompanying picture taken from a security camera which it said showed the suspect carrying explosives behind the Traders Hotel.
It did not say whether the suspect had been arrested, but noted that authorities had asked people to come forward with information. The blasts, the latest in a spate of similar incidents this year, come just three weeks before a referendum on a proposed army-backed constitution, Myanmar’s first polling since 1990.
Myanmar has been hit by a series of small blasts and rebel shootings since December. The authorities have blamed many of the attacks on the Karen National Union ethnic rebel group.
One woman was wounded in January in a blast at Yangon’s railway station, while earlier that month a woman was killed in a similar bombing at a train station in the remote new capital of Naypyidaw. Myanmar’s generals say the new constitution will give some ethnic groups more autonomy and pave the way for multi-party elections in 2010, but pro-democracy activists say the charter simply entrenches military rule.
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