Burma bomb kills two and wounds 14
A bomb exploded at a busy market in Burma’s second-largest city today, killing at least two people and wounding 14 others, an official said.
The blast occurred on the ground floor of the Zay Cho market in Mandalay just before closing time, the local official said.
The two victims and at least 12 of the wounded were women, the official said.
A resident who was at the market at the time of the blast saw one woman covered in blood and a man, also bloodied, being carried out of the market on a stretcher.
The explosion was not loud and wasn’t heard by people at the opposite end of the large building, said another resident.
Mandalay is located 350 miles north of Yangon. It is the country’s cultural hub and an important tourist destination. It was not immediately known if any foreign tourists were wounded.
The four-storey Zay Cho market is Mandalay’s biggest and busiest, selling commodities ranging from meat, to textiles, to electrical goods.
A bomb exploded there in 2001, wounding eight people. Burma authorities blamed that blast on an ethnic Shan rebel group.
Last month, the capital of Yangon was rocked by two small explosions, including a bomb at a small downtown hotel. No injuries were reported in either incident.
On Friday, ethnic Karenni rebels destroyed a utility tower in north-eastern Burma, disrupting the area’s electrical power grid but causing no injuries.
Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962. The current regime took power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
The junta keeps tight control over the population and anti-government violence is rare, often bringing quick and severe punishment.
