AFP : Bangladesh border guards on a

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Subject: AFP : Bangladesh border guards on alert after Myanmar mortar  fire

Bangladesh border guards on alert after Myanmar mortar fire
   
   CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, Dec 28 (AFP) - Bangladesh Tuesday put guards along 
its border with Myanmar on alert after some 100 mortar rounds were fired into 
Bangladesh, but without causing casualties, officials here said.
   The Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) went on alert along the 271 kilometer (168 
mile) southeastern frontier with Myanmar after the shells landed overnight in 
the Tumbu area near Teknaf town, BDR regional officer Colonel Wali told AFP.
   Bangladesh officials have sent a formal protest to their Myanmar 
counterparts and asked for an immediate meeting to discuss the incident, he 
added.
   Wali said the brief unprovoked firing, believed to have been carried out
by Myanmar border guards at Nasaka, began at 11:15 p.m. (1715 GMT) Monday
night 
and stopped only after BDR guards from a nearby camp fired warning shots.
   There were no casualties on the Bangladesh side, Wali said, but gave no 
other details.
   The incident coincided with the naming Monday of Ohn Thwin, a 48-year-old 
army brigadier, as Myanmar's new ambassador to Bangladesh.
   Brigadier Thwin, who was Division Commander of the Military Operation 
Command in Yangon before being posted to Bangladesh, will succeed incumbent 
Tint Lwin, an official announcement said, but did not specify when Thwin will 
arrive in Dhaka.
   Border skirmishes have been reported occasionally in the past between 
Bangladesh and Myanmar particularly since more than 250,000 Myanmar
nationals, known as Muslim Rohingays, fled their homes in 1991 alleging
persecution by 
the military junta and took refuse in Bangladesh.
   Most of them had returned home by 1997 under a Dhaka-Yangon agreement 
backed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, but several thousand
refused to return and stayed in two make-shift camps causing occasional
violence and 
tension in the area and along the border.