Man believed killed by own bomb near Myanmar's capital (Roundup)

Oct 20, 2008, 14:11 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 Myanmar's capital at the weekend, police said Monday.    The person behind Sunday's blast in a residential area of Shwe Pyi Thar township, 19 kilometres north of Yangon, was not identified by police, but local sources who requested anonymity said a former monk, Thet Oo Win, 36, was killed.

   Thet Oo Win had been among the monks who protested against his country's military government in September 2007, the sources said. Last year's demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the junta.

   A similar device exploded Saturday evening near a sports field in Yangon without injuring anyone. A second bomb was also apparently defused 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.

   Police and local sources said that after last year's protests, Thet Oo Win left the monkhood and moved to Myanmar's border area, where he received explosives training.

   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 10 wounded by two bombs at a video cafe in the capital.

   On September, 25 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.