"In one of their most audacious insurgent operations in recent years, ethnic minority rebels in northeast Myanmar launched a wave of surprise attacks including on the nation’s premier military academy and main trade artery with China. The lightning offensive by the factions of the so-called Northern Alliance-Burma (NAB) opened a potentially crucial northern front in a war driven by minority demands for federal autonomy that since the beginning of the year has already swept the western coastal state of Rakhine. Unfolding in the pre-dawn hours of August 15, rebel assaults targeted multiple points in Nawng Khio township of Shan state on the main highway linking the city of Mandalay to the town of Muse on the Chinese border. Nawng Khio is close to the historic colonial-era Goteik railway viaduct. Joining forces for the offensive were rebel troops from three NAB factions – the Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the ethnic Chinese Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) based in the Kokang region, and the Rakhine Arakan Army (AA), which continues to field forces in northern Myanmar even as its main operational focus has shifted to its home state on the western coast..."