GUWAHATI: Assam Rifles personnel have apprehended eight rebels of the Arakan Liberation Army (ALA), a major insurgent group of Myanmar, in Mizoram and seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition.
Defence sources told Express that the rebels, who were in combat fatigues, were caught during an operation near Tuithumnar in Lwangtlai district on Friday and handed over to the district administration. The weapons seized from their possession included the sophisticated M16 and AK56 rifles.
“Language is a problem and so we couldn’t find out the reason for their infiltration. But what we understood was that they are all members of the Arakan Liberation Army ,” sources said.
The Arakan Liberation Army which is active in Rakhine and Karen states of Myanmar, was founded in 1968. But the arrests and imprisonment of a number of its leaders in the following months that year led to its dissolution.
Between 1971 and 1972, some of them were released and they re-established the outfit with the help of Karen National Union.
The ALA campaigns on a nationalist agenda and views the ethnic Rohingyas as illegal immigrants of Bangladesh and has long been very hostile to them.
Myanmar has around 20 insurgent groups. Over a dozen of them are in peace mode after signing ceasefire agreements with the Myanmar government.