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William Barnes

Attacks by government troops forced Karen rebels to flee a key base yesterday, while fears of fresh raids remained high in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border.

 Thai military officers and officials of the Karen National Union (KNU) insurgent group said the rebels' 7th Brigade headquarters at Tha Ko Sutha, north of the Thai border town of Mae Sot, had been abandoned after five days of attacks.

 Three-hundred KNU defenders split into smaller groups and withdrew deeper into Burma to stage hit-and-run raids, said KNU officials.

 One guerilla was confirmed killed in the five-day battle.

 Mines have been laid to slow pursuit by Burmese forces.

 Major-General Chamlong Photong, chief of staff of the Thai 3rd Army, responsible for the Thai side of the frontier, said his forces were bracing for more attacks by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a Karen splinter group allied with the Burmese Government.

 The fall of the camp was imminent.

 The local militia had to flee a house at the border town of Tha Song Yang when the district officer decided it was time to go back to the bamboo town of Mae Hla.

 The officer was wearing the Thai officials' trademark dark blue safari suit.

 However, the dozen-strong escort was much more imaginative - sunglasses, tight-fitting camouflage uniforms, scarves, headbands and carrying grenades.

 The pick-up truck convoy roared off in a cloud of dust at breakneck speed down the road that runs parallel with the Thai-Burma border.

 When we arrived at Mae Hla half an hour later the militia jumped out with grim determination and headed for the bamboo beds in some of the many carefully sandbagged emplacements that identify the entrances to one of Thailand's biggest refugee camps.

 As the militia sheltered from the sweltering afternoon heat, two doctors went in search of a young boy who had been hit by shrapnel a couple of hours earlier. The heat and the threat of more mortar bombs had forced the 35,000 Karen of Mae Hla to seek shade.

 The only sound was from the cicadas and a slow wind passing through tinder-dry leaves.

 Elderly Karen squatting in cool corners quietly told of their fear of attacks by the Burmese Army or Karen defectors.

 Renegade Karen crossed the Moei River into Thailand last week and destroyed the 9,000-strong border village of Huay Kalok, a 15-minute drive north of Thailand's regional capital Mae Sot. Now they are threatening Mae Hla.

 Burmese soldiers - or their Karen proxies - have threatened to destroy every bamboo town housing Karen exiles within their reach if the people do not come back to Burma.

 'Their sweet talk is peculiar,' a woman in her 60s said.

 'But the Burmese Army was never subtle was it?'  The Karen people are petrified by the sight of scores of heavily armed Thai soldiers or reports that Thai gunners are firing back at shells from Burma, round for round.



Karen rebels abandon key base