Online Desk: Foreign minister Dr Hasan Mahmud said Dhaka today strongly protested by summoning Myanmar ambassador Aung Kyaw Moe over the casualty in Bangladesh by mortar shells that crossed the border.

“We placed strong protest to Myanmar … This is completely unacceptable,” he told reporters at the foreign ministry here this noon.

The minister said such incidents of entering Myanmar people in Cox’s Bazar and causing casualty inside Bangladesh by mortar shells crossing border from Rakhine is unexpected and unacceptable while Dhaka has been working to repatriate forcibly displace Rohingyas to Rakhain.

Earlier, foreign ministry’s Director General (DG) of Myanmar Wing Miah Md Mainul Kabir summoned the Myanmar ambassador to Bangladesh at the state guest House Padma in the morning and handed over Dhaka’s strong protest on the incidents of violence in Rakhine state that spill over in the border.

The Myanmar envoy said he will convey the Dhaka’s message to his government.

The foreign minister said: “A total of 229 Myanmar’s paramilitary Border Guard Police (BGP) and some of their family members took refuge in Bangladesh till this morning.”

The BGP personnel have been fleeing their posts in last three days amid reports of heavy gunfights between the government troops and the rebels in the junta-run country.

Some of the injured members of the Border Guard Police (BGP) have shifted to Chattogram from Cox’s Bazar for better treatment.

Fierce fighting has been going on in Myanmar’s Rakhine state between the army and the armed group Arakan Army.

The clash in Myanmar has frightened Bangladeshi residents near the border area while many villagers left their homes to safer places as the sound of constant fighting on the other side of the border continued.

The foreign minister said Myanmar government has already reached out the Bangladesh authority to take back their people and currently the two sides are discussing the process of taking back the BGP members.

“Till now, they (Myanmar government) agree to take back their personnel by waterways,” he said.

Asked for comment on the BNP’s remark that the Myanmar BGP members are entering Bangladesh and the conflicts are spilling into Bangladesh border for Dhaka’s lenient foreign policy, Hasan Mahmud said that the BNP leaders have gone insane now.

“BNP thought that the foreign countries will not welcome the new government of Bangladesh after the polls, but now that all are welcoming and expressing their interests to work with us, BNP is speaking the language of the insane,” he said.
Regarding his first bilateral tour to India, the foreign minister said, during the tour, he would meet Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, Commerce Minister Piush Goyal and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

“We, earlier, sought the support of India for Rohingya repatriation. We will also discuss the Myanmar security situation as both our countries have borders with Myanmar,” Dr Mahmud said.

The foreign minister will leave here for New Delhi tonight and is expected to return on February 9.