Ethnic armed groups in Myanmar claim capture of regional military headquarters and gem mining center

BANGKOK (AP) — Ethnic armed groups claimed on Thursday to have captured two strategically important towns in northeastern Myanmar: Lashio, which houses the major regional military headquarters, and Mogok, the center of the country’s lucrative gem-mining industry.

Their fall would be the biggest in a series of setbacks suffered by Myanmar’s military government this year, and raises questions about whether the ruling military council could be forced to give up trying to hold contested territory in order to consolidate a defense of the central heartland.

The ruling military council denied its Lashio headquarters had been taken over, and two town residents contacted by phone said fighting there was continuing. Phone contact with Mogok has been cut off, but video posted on social media appeared to show residents cheering the arrival of ethnic guerrilla soldiers.

Lashio, the biggest city in the northern part of Shan state, and Mogok, the ruby-mining center in the upper Mandalay region, have been the targets of an offensive by the MNDAA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the TNLA, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, since late June.

The MNDAA is a military force of the Kokang minority, who are ethnic Chinese, and the TNLA represents the Ta’ang, or Palaung, ethnic minority. The groups have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government, and are loosely allied with the People’s Defense Force, or PDF, the pro-democracy resistance that arose to fight military rule after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.

The two armed groups are part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which last October launched a surprise offensive that succeeded in seizing large