China summons Myanmar envoy over cross-border attack

China has summoned the Myanmar ambassador in Beijing after a warplane belonging to Myanmar military killed four people in China’s southwestern frontier region.

According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin summoned Myanmar Ambassador Thit Linn Ohn on Friday night to lodge a strong protest against the killings.

Liu demanded that the Myanmar government launch an immediate investigation and bring to justice those responsible for the deaths.

Senior authorities in Beijing have also urged Naypyidaw to take effective measures in order to prevent recurrence of such incidents in the border areas between the two countries.

A bomb dropped from the Myanmar warplane hit a sugarcane field in China’s Yunnan province on Friday, killing at least four workers and injuring nine others.

The Chinese government has repeatedly warned of a threat to border stability following the dramatic upsurge in ethnic conflict in the remote Kokang region in Myanmar’s northeastern Shan state.

The Kokang rebels, formally known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), are an ethnic group living in a self-administered area on the restive Myanmar-China border.

The MNDAA seeks to retake the self-administered area, which was under their control between 1989 and 2009.

Fierce fighting, centered on the town of Laukkai in Kokang, has surged in the remote and rough region since the Kokang rebels launched a series of surprise attacks on February 9.

In an attempt to end decades of ethnic conflict, Myanmar’s government has signed ceasefire deals with rebel groups over the past three years.

Nearly 80 Kokang rebels and 60 soldiers have been killed since the wave of unrest broke out.

The conflict has also displaced tens of thousands of people along the border on Myanmar’s side. At least 30,000 civilians have also fled Myanmar across the border into southwestern China.