YANGON: Myanmar’s military junta said yesterday that a time bomb found at an upscale international school last week was likely planted by foreign students as part of an April Fools joke.
The bomb, similar in design to explosives that killed 19 people in the capital almost a year ago, had been found and defused at the International School of Yangon on Thursday, security personnel said.
Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan, information minister of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, told a press conference that investigators had to consider other factors since the students of diplomats from the United States and other foreigners working in Myanmar attend the school.
“The so-called ‘time bomb’ found at the international school in Yagon was an improvisation of students playing an ‘April Fools’ joke,” Kyaw Hsan said, downplaying the incident despite previous bombings in the capital.
The bomb was found in a bathroom trash can by a teacher who noticed smoke coming from the container. Sources said the fuse of the bomb was attached to a lit cigarette that had not yet burned down sufficiently to light the device’s fuse.
The International School of Yangon caters to the children of diplomats and offspring of Myanmar’s upper class, who can afford the $10,000 annual tuition.
Myanmar security personnel have launched an investigation into the bomb attempt.
Three simultaneous explosions went off in Yangon department stores on May 7, 2005, killing at least 19 people and injuring 162 others.
Authorities initially blamed the blasts on ethnic minority groups but then pointed the finger at an unnamed “superpower,” presumably meaning the United States.
During the press conference, Kyaw Hsan claimed the US was destabilising the Southeast Asian region by referring Myanmar, also known as Burma, to the United Nations Security Council. The general also accused exiled opposition groups and unnamed terrorist groups of conducting bombings in the country and carrying out atrocities such as ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar, along with North Korea, is Asia’s leading pariah state and is accused of widespread human rights abuses. Its ruling junta refused to give up power after losing a 1990 election to pro- democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League For Democracy.
The generals have refused to heed international calls, most recently by its neighbours in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to release Suu Kyi from house arrest and move toward civilian rule and democracy.–DPA |
