BEIJING
Myanmar apologized to China on Thursday for bombing its territory and killing five of its citizens during fighting with rebels on its northern border.
The apology comes just two weeks after Myanmar’s government sought to shift blame for the deaths onto the ethnic rebels.
China’s official news agency Xinhua reported Myanmar’s Foreign Minister Vunna Maung Lvin as apologizing for the incident, which occurred in the Chinese southwestern province of Yunnan.
Lvin added that he shares the pain and sorrow of the families of those injured or killed, and that the two countries were working on compensation.
Measures will be taken so the same incident is not repeated, he said.
Myanmar’s army had initially insisted that they did not enter Chinese territory, saying authorities were investigating a “Kokang insurgent group” for the March 13 deaths while conflict intensified between government troops and ethnic Kokang rebels in the borderlands of Shan state.
The probe would determine “whether [a] Kokang insurgent group is involved in this incident to have negative impact on the friendship between Myanmar and China and to create instability along the border area,” the statement added.
The Chinese government subsequently summoned the Myanmar ambassador in Beijing to protest the killings, and also sent jets to the 2000 km (1243 miles) long shared border following the incident.
Over 60,000 refugees entered China in fighting between government forces and the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Dozens of troops on both sides died, but the full extent of the toll on civilians remains unknown.
The MNDAA, led by the ethnically Chinese Peng Jiasheng, was formed out of the China-backed Communist Party of Burma, which disbanded in the late 1980s.
The latest round of fighting began after Peng's troops entered the Kokang self-administered region early last month, having been forced from the area by an army offensive in 2009.
