About 1,000 fighters of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) briefly seized the Burmese border town of Myawaddy yesterday, prompting a battle with government forces and the exodus of thousands of refugees into Thailand. The attack came one day after few Burmese voted in the first election for the country -- also called Myanmar -- to be held in two decades. As expected, about 8 in 10 seats in the new parliament were won by the political parties operating on behalf of the martial government.
View DKBA clash November, 2010 in a larger map
The Karen, an ethnic group which lives near or along the border with Thailand, have been fighting for an independent Karin state since Burma gained independence from colonial Britain nearly 50 years ago. The DKBA, a splinter of the larger Karen National Liberation Army, had managed detente with Rangoon: cessation of hostilities in exchange for an autonomous region.
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