Rakhine State police are investigating three people suspected of planning a series of three bombings that injured at least one person in Sittwe on Saturday morning.
Police have not released the names of the suspects, but Eleven has reported that one of them is a former ward administrator named Shwe Tun Aung, and another is a man named Ko Naing Soe. They, along with a third suspect, were reportedly taken to a Sittwe police station on Feb. 25.
Ye Paing Soe, the younger brother of Ko Naing Soe, told Eleven: “The police took my brother from the house to the police station at around 6pm. The family has not gotten any information about him and now are at the police station.”
The bombs went off at around 4am on Saturday. One was planted at the home of the Rakhine State government secretary, while the two others went off near an office and on a road leading to the coast.
A police officer received minor injuries from one of the explosions. Police also defused three additional, unexploded bombs in the state capital.
The bombings are thought to have been orchestrated by the Arakan Army – an ethnic insurgent group that seeks to separate historically Rakhine lands from Myanmar. Tensions between Rakhines and the Myanmar government have escalated since police shot dead seven members of a Rakhine mob in Mrauk U last month.
After the killings, the Arakan Army vowed to retaliate, and two weeks later, the town’s administrator was found murdered by the side of a road.
The Sittwe bombings also come less than three days after a bomb exploded inside a Yoma Bank branch in Lashio, Shan State, killing two women and injuring 22 others. The Myanmar military blamed the bombing on an unnamed “terrorist group.”
Lashio lies in an area where the Myanmar military has clashed recently with the Northern Alliance – a collective of ethnic armed groups that have rejected the government’s peace process. The Arakan Army is a member.
