Friday 18 January 2008

Myanmar blast kills transit worker

(CNN) -- A bomb placed in the back of a passenger bus killed the conductor Wednesday, Myanmar's state-run newspaper said.

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Bicycle taxi drivers struggle through traffic outside a city market in Yangon last October.

It was the fourth bomb attack in the military-ruled southeastern Asian nation in the last week.

The explosion did not claim more lives because passengers had gotten off to get breakfast, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

The bus, on its way from the eastern town of Kyaukkyi to Myanmar's capital Yangon, had pulled over at a road-side restaurant when the bomb went off Wednesday morning, the newspaper reported.

The 35-year-old conductor was the only casualty.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday's bus attack.

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The town of Kyaukkyi is in the Karen state, home to the Karen National Union (KNU). The group has been fighting for independence for the ethnic Karen people.

The government claims that the KNU has been waging attacks to destabilize the military junta that has run the country -- located between Bangladesh and Thailand -- for two decades.

In the last week, two explosions at separate railway stations in the country wounded one woman and killed another, and a bomb blast during a circus show in a rural town injured four and killed the rebel suspected of planting it, the news agency said.

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