China has summoned the Burmese ambassador for a meeting in Beijing after a bomb from a Burmese aircraft fell in Chinese territory and killed four Chinese people, China's foreign ministry has said.
Burma government forces have been battling rebels on the border with China since last month. China had previously urged Burma to "lower the temperature".
However, Burma denied that any bomb from its forces had fallen in China and said the rebels might have fired into China to create “misunderstanding”.
China said the bomb from the Burmese aircraft fell on Friday in a sugar cane field near the city of Lincang, in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. Chinese state media reported nine people were wounded.
The incident came days after a stray shell from Burma flattened a house in Chinese territory, prompting condemnation from Beijing.
Tens of thousands of people, many of them ethnic Chinese, have fled the fighting in northeastern Burma’s Kokang region into China.
Chinese vice-foreign minister Liu Zhenmin urged the Burmese ambassador, Thit Linn Ohn, to investigate the aircraft bombing and to take steps to ensure the safety of the border area.
A spokesman for China’s air force said it had dispatched aircraft to patrol the border and step up the protection of China’s airspace.
An official in the office of the Burma president said Burmese forces had kept Chinese forces fully informed of their air operations, which were carried out “strictly adhering to the information we told them”.
“The targets of all our aerial attacks were inside our territory,” officials told reporters.
“It’s possible that those fighting with us purposely created these attacks with the intent of causing misunderstanding between China and us . . . We plan to explain it to Chinese diplomats.”
Chinese mercenaries
Burma has said Chinese mercenaries were fighting with the rebels, and it has urged cooperation with China to prevent “terrorist attacks” being launched from Chinese territory.
China has denied that any attacks in Burma have been launched from its territory.
The rebels are from a group called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which is led by ethnic Chinese commander Peng Jiasheng.
The MNDAA was formed from remnants of the Communist Party of Burma, a powerful China-backed guerrilla force that battled the Burmese government until it splintered in 1989.
The group struck a truce with the government which lasted until 2009, when government troops took over the rebels’ region in a conflict that pushed tens of thousands of refugees into China.
While the ethnic Chinese rebels have won some sympathy among the public in China, the Burmese army, long feared at home for its suppression of democracy, has won favour from the Burmese public for being seen to stand up to what many see as Chinese designs on their territory.
China and Burma share a 2,000 km (1,250 mile) border.
Reuters