Burmese naval boats off Arrakan Coast. |
“At about 5:30 in the morning of July 15 we got the news of three Bengali motorboats coming into Sit-ke village at the west of Pauk-taw town. So our naval boats went out to check and ran into one of them Bengali boats near the village of The-khone. According to the navy men that boat started shooting at them and they had to shoot back. And they wounded one Bengali in the chest and captured the rest with the boat,” relayed the news by one Pauk-taw local who heard the whole incident.
He also added that once the Bengalis on that boat realized they were trapped they threw down their guns into the creek to hide the fact that they were armed insurgents.
“What we heard was the navy is now searching the creek to recover the guns. They got 8 Bengalis and one is now at the Sittwe Hospital and the seven are sent to the Sittwe Prison,” told Ko Khai Kaung Zan of Sittwe.
In a news report from YPI (Yangon Press International) the wounded Bengali from the clash was Adu Salim (25 years old) and all eight were from the Taf in Bangladesh. The interrogation revealed that they were all armed and sent by an unknown Islamic terrorist organization in Bangladesh (Al-Qaeda related?). Some of them terrorists were found to be able to speak some broken Yakhine.
The rest of the intruding armed-motorboats are still hiding in the area and the navy has been searching for them and the gunshots from the clashes could even be heard from the Sittwe. And the increasing activities of Burmese navy on the waters off Arakan coast can be clearly seen from the shore line.