Man killed by own bomb near Myanmar capital

Oct 20, 2008, 3:36 GMT

Yangon - A bomb that probably exploded prematurely killed its carrier in a town north of Yangon, in the second of two blasts in or near the capital over the weekend, said police Monday. The person behind Sunday's 5:30 pm (1100 GMT) blast in a residential area of Shwe Pyi Thar township, 19 kilometres north of Yangon, was not identified by police.

A similar device exploded on Saturday evening near a sports ground in the capital, without injuring anyone. A second bomb was also apparently defused on Saturday.

Terrorism is rare in Myanmar even though the country is troubled by a myriad of civil conflicts. The military government habitually blames either associates of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her National League for Democracy (NLD) party or ethnic minority armies.

There has been a spate of explosions over the past three months. The state media reported that on September 11, two people were killed and another 10 wounded by two bombs at a video cafe in the capital.

On September 25 six people suffered minor injuries in a small bomb blast at a bus stop outside City Hall in the downtown area. Myanmar has been ruled since a 1962 coup by the military, which ignored its overwhelming loss in a 1990 general election to the NLD and Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the years since.