Fighting between Karenni rebels and Burma's
military junta reached its fourth this week with the Karenni National Progressive
Party's armed wing the Karenni Army attacking government forces.
Gun-fire rang out on Monday as the KNPP
attacked junta troops under the command of Maj. Myo Min Aung and pro-junta
group the Karenni Nationalities Peoples' Liberation Front in Maw Chi township,
Karenni State.
There are no reported casualties yet in the fighting, which Karenni rebels say is the fight for their autonomy.
State Peace and Development Council and pro-military forces have accused villagers in areas controlled by the KNPP of supporting the group. Junta forces are known to have committed human rights violations in the area, have forcibly removed villagers from their homes and stolen property.
Villagers told Mizzima on December 16, three battalions of SPDC troops under the command of Col. Tun Tun Win, accompanied by the KNPLF, looted a village called Pah Poe.
The next day junta troops, joined by pro-junta Karenni faction the Karenni National Solidarity Organisation, surrounded the Pahaw Koe village in Pasaung and arrested 10 villagers, including women.
The villagers were beaten by the army and women were used as walking land-mine detectors when their captors moved on to the next village.
As gun fire broke out between the military and the KNPP, more than 200 villagers from three villages were forced to run for their lives to escape bullets aimed at them.
One SPDC soldier is reported to have been killed by rebels in Pha Poe village by on December 18.
There are an estimated 90,000 internally displaced person or IDPs in Karenni State as people flee the fighting director of Karenni Social Welfare Committee Khu Hteh Pu said.
"Most of the IDPs are in the free fire zone in the area near Maw Chi, District-2 of Karenni State, and they are moving from place to place. Although some of them can come to refugee camps in Thailand but they choose not to as they don't want to abandon their place forever or they don't have any relation in this side," Khu Hteh Pu said.
The SPDC and KNPP signed a cease-fire agreement in 1995, which lasted only three months after Burmese troops arrested some of the group's members, violating the agreement.
The KNPLF signed a cease-fire agreement with the SPDC in 1994 and KNSO surrendered to the SPDC in 2000.