Myanmar
security forces killed three people while clearing a suspected Rohingya
insurgent training camp in the mountains in the troubled northwestern state of
Rakhine,
the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar daily said on Thursday.
The
authorities conducted "area clearance operation" over the last two
days, uncovering a tunnel, homemade weapons, huts, rations, utensils and other
items used by the militants in the training, the newspaper said.
More than a
million Muslim Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine, where
many majority Buddhists consider them interlopers from Bangladesh. The
insurgent group was not immediately available for comment.
The
insurgents attacked border guard posts in October, provoking a military
crackdown in which hundreds were killed, more than 1,000 houses burned down and
75,000 people forced to flee to Bangladesh.
The United
Nations has established a fact-finding mission to investigate crimes against
humanity allegedly committed by the security forces during the
counter-offensive. The administration of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi has rejected the allegations and opposes the mission.
Photos
published on the newspaper's front page showed materials found at the site, in
the remote Mayu Mountain range, including 20 black skiing masks, gun powder and
long wooden guns believed to have been used during the training.
In March,
Reuters described how a small group of Rohingya leaders recruited several
hundred young men in the run-up to the October offensive, teaching them karate
and training them with wooden guns.
One man who
attacked security forces inside the 80-feet (24.4-metre) tunnel with a machete
was "killed in self-defense" on Tuesday, the paper said, while two
men were killed on Wednesday.
The
operation continues.
rEUTERS
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