Reports say camps on the border have been targeted Myanmar has attacked Indian rebels sheltering in its border territory, capturing a key base and killing 14 guerillas last week. A military intelligence source in the northeast Indian state of Nagaland said yesterday that Myanmese soldiers were still chasing the Naga rebels in western Myanmar and the fleeing rebels could soon re-enter Indian territory. The Indian source said insurgents from Assam state were with the Naga forces. Last month, Assam insurgents killed 70 migrant labourers in a campaign against non-Assamese interests in the oil- and tea-rich Indian state. India has offered further military assistance to the Myanmese junta and pressured it to flush out the rebels who had bases in the western jungles. A spokesman from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland said yesterday that Myanmese troops were bombarding three bases where Naga rebels were training. 'Although Naga rebels were returning the fire, the [United Liberation Front of Assam] guerillas had moved out of the camps before the fighting started,' said Kughalo Mulatonu, spokesman for the Nagaland group, adding there were about 50 camps with 7,000 guerillas in the western Myanmese Sagaing region. 'A Myanmese brigade of about 3,500 soldiers have been pressed into action in Sagaing against us, but they cannot overrun us. We are ready to give the Myanmese military a real taste of our fighting skills.' Sources from the border area report that rebels have moved to denser forests in mountainous areas where troops will have more difficulty tracking them. The relationship between the Myanmese military and Indian insurgents has previously been a murky one, with guerillas from the largest rebel group - the United National Liberation Front - using arms reportedly supplied by Myanmese troops. A New Delhi-based Myanmese journalist said his country's troops would never launch action to drive the guerillas out of its territory because they needed the guerillas to help keep check on the activities of Myanmese pro-democracy activists living in border states. 'The guerillas use arms and ammunitions borrowed or supplied by Myanmese troops and sometimes those guerillas are used in attacks on the Myanmese democracy activists in Indian border towns, as they did last year,' said Soe Minn, referring to a January 2006 incident in which two Myanmese pro-democracy activists were abducted by commandos from the Indian border town of Moreh, with the help of Indian cadres.
