Police officers manning under staffed checkpoints on the road network in Shan State South, where both the non-ceasefire Shan State Army (SSA) South and the “almost out of” ceasefire SSA North are active, have been withdrawn, according to reports coming from Shan State.

The withdrawal followed an attack by four SSA fighters posing as cowherds on the checkpoint manned by four police officers at sundown on 12 October. The clash, which occurred between Mongnawng and Wanzing (a large village south of Mongnawng), lasted barely two minutes (another report says 20 minutes) during which a police officer was fatally wounded. The attackers melted into the dusk.

A day earlier, a three-truck convoy coming to Mongnawng along the Monghsu-Mongnawng road was ambushed near Wiang Kao, about five miles north of Mongnawng. A Captain Sithu from Infantry Battalion #286 was reportedly killed.

The Military Operations Command #2, based in Mongnawng, later arrived at the ambush site and took into custody two of the village headmen, one from Mwedaw village and the other from Wiang Kao, according to a report. One villager found working in a shifting rice field was also beaten up. “Both are yet to return home,” said a source.

Last year, the Burmese Army withdrew its outposts in the same area following a series of attacks  by the SSA South, led by Sao Yawd Serk. The Burmese Army then launched a scorched earth campaign that destroyed over 500 homes and 200 granaries and forcibly relocated more than 10,000 people in 39 villages in the same area, according to Community-based Shan organizations on the Thai-Burma border.