A correspondent
Karen State, Burma
A PITCHED battle lasting all of this week between soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta and the Karen National Liberation Army has left scores dead.
There has been a significant escalation in fighting between units of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council and soldiers of the KNLA opposite the northern Thailand province of Tak.
A major push by the SPDC to take a long-standing base camp of the KNLA, the headquarters of its Sixth Brigade 201st battalion has been thwarted, for now.
The SPDC offensive to take Wah Lay Kee, launched from Thai territory, began at 5am last Monday.
That the SPDC soldiers were prepared to intrude on Thai sovereignty is an indication of how determined they were to take the KNLA camp.
And they did.
But by evening they had lost it again, and 200 SPDC soldiers had been surrounded by four KNLA units of between 10 and 30 men.
The KNLA dug in close in heavy jungle, one group about 20 metres away from their enemies.
Both sides have taken heavy casualties as a result of landmines.
The fighting took place around a peninsula of Thai land that juts into Burma known as Phop Phra.
Phop Phra is an eccentricity of border demarcation between these two Southeast Asian nations.
The KNLA on Wednesday seized a 50-calibre Browning machine-gun, the type usually mounted on top of armoured vehicles.
A 50-calibre Browning can cut buildings to pieces.
Yesterday there were 50 dead SPDC soldiers, including the commander of Light Infantry Battalion 410, Aung May Zaw.
While the SPDC took responsibility for Monday’s initial assault, light units of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a slave militia, eventually backed them.
Mae Sot General Hospital, on Thai territory, is today full of casualties from all sides.
Yesterday (Friday) morning, three DKBA soldiers stepped on landmines and two SPDC soldiers were shot.
All sides in this protracted conflict use landmines extensively.
There were dead on both sides just hours after the SPDC launched the offensive against Wah Lay Kee on Monday morning.
By the next day 16 SPDC soldiers were dead, 13 had fled to Thailand and were in the hands of the Thai military.
A KNLA soldier was dead, two wounded and soldiers of the DKBA and KNLA soldiers were lying in beds close to one another at Mae Sot General Hospital, eyeing each other off.
One porter, seized at gunpoint from a nearby village by SPDC troops, had his leg amputated in the same hospital, another innocent victim of the world’s longest-running insurgency.
This latest battle, the heaviest of recent months, constitutes a major diplomatic incident.
On Wednesday evening senior Thai army officials attempted mediation between the KNLA, SPDC and DKBA, but to no avail.
On Thursday night Aung May Zaw, the overseer of a mortar unit essentially rendered useless because KNLA guerillas were so close to the SPDC units, was killed by KNLA snipers using AK RPDs.
This does not augur well for mediation.
On Friday afternoon the KNLA were re-supplied with M-79 grenades for their ageing weapons and were preparing to defend their precarious position in their bid for independence that began in 1949.
