Posted on 05/07/2005 12:25:40 PM PDT by Lessismore
Four huge bomb explosions have rocked the Burmese capital Rangoon, killing dozens of people and leaving over 200 injured.
The near-simultaneous mid-afternoon blasts targeted two packed upscale shopping centres, the Dagon and Junction Eight, and the downtown Rangoon Trade Centre which is hosting a Thai trade fair.
A witness at the downtown Dagon centre, where two bombs exploded, counted at least 20 bodies, while a witness at Junction Eight - some 13 kilometres north of the city centre - counted over 40.
A Burmese national at the Rangoon Trade Centre says he also saw scores of bodies there.
A stall holder at the centre says there "many casualties" because the bomb hit a fashion show being held on the third floor.
An official from Burma's military government has confirmed four bombs were detonated, but has given no casualty count.
Hospitals in Yangon have been unable to give a death toll, but say over 200 people are wounded.
"I saw these people in a pool of blood. Some of them had their legs and arms blown off," a man outside the Rangoon Trade Centre said.
A survivor of the Dagon blast recalls panicked efforts to escape.
"There was an explosion in the Dagon centre, and we were so frightened we ran downstairs to get out," a young woman said.
A witness at Junction Eight said she counted "at least 40 bodies being brought out of the building".
Military-ruled Burma has been at various stages of civil war for decades, with government troops battling several ethnic guerrilla armies, but the capital has not seen an attack on this scale in living memory.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Staff at Yangon General Hospital say they have been inundated with dead and wounded.
"We cannot say how many people are dead, but we have received about 200 injured people," an emergency services official at the hospital said.
Several junta officials have been seen at the scene of the attacks.
Access roads to the bomb sites have been blocked by security forces, an AFP correspondent said.
Call for democratic reform
The blasts came on the day Asian and European foreign ministers meeting in Japan urged Burma to speed up democratic reforms.
But the ministers stopped short of making more specific demands, such as the release of Opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, has spent most of the past 15 years in detention after her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power.
It's BUSH'S fault!
There is never an excuse for "settling on defenseless shoppers". A potential government who would do that is no better than what they have, no matter how bad.
A couple of the neighborhoods are occupied partly owned by a number of retired generals. Some people think that Than Shwe is serving notice to a few of them that siding with Khin Nyunt (reformer, now under house arrest) is a bad idea. Arson with gasoline was the old school way, but the retired generals mostly live in cinderblock houses with tall fences around. Factions in power often use this kind of thuggery to get people to distance themselves from factions recently deposed.
In other words, this may well be a consolidation of power by the government they already have.
Thanks for the information. That explains a lot.
Call it a wild guess but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say .... muslims did this.
possible - it is common knowledge in Burma that there are government people getting investments from Saudi donors who are building mosques, etc.
Government terror is more likely though. The EU is all over Rangoon, the government doesn't want people saying anything negative about the country to foreigners. Right now video (mostly pirated), gem, and other businesses are being shut down completely while foreign investors are in town.
In this case and in others in the past, rumors about an impending attack run wild through the targeted neighborhoods several weeks before they occur.
These independent paramilitary groups and the NCG have nothing to gain and everything to lose by targeting innocents in Rangoon. The regular Rangoon citizen sympathizes with them to a great extent.
OTOH, the government has several reasons to pull something like this off - there is a power struggle/succession dispute going on between Than Shwe and Khin Nyunt, and also the government wants to make sure nobody messes up the trade negotiations going on between Myanmar and the EU. They want people to stay home and keep their mouths shut.
Myanmar Ping
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