Aizawl: India has sent back 184 out of 276 Myanmarese soldiers who entered Mizoram last week following gunfights with an ethnic insurgent group, an Assam Rifles official said.
The official said on Monday that the Myanmar army personnel were airlifted by Myanmar air force planes from Lengpui airport near Aizawl to Sittwe in the neighbouring country’s Rakhine state.
The remaining 92 soldiers will be repatriated on Tuesday, she said.
The Myanmarese soldiers entered Bandukbanga village, located at the India-Myanmar-Bangladesh trijunction, in southernmost Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district with arms and ammunition on 17 January and approached the Assam Rifles.
They fled to Mizoram after their camp was overrun and captured by Arakan Army fighters.
The Myanmarese soldiers were taken to the nearby Assam Rifles camp at Parva, and later the majority of them were shifted to Lunglei, she added.
They have been under the supervision of the Assam Rifles since then, the official said.
These 276 soldiers were brought to Aizawl over Saturday and Sunday, for their transport to Myanmar from the Lengpui airport.
The group is headed by a colonel, and has 36 officers and 240 lower-rank personnel, officials said.
With the 276 soldiers who entered last week, as many as 635 Myanmar soldiers have fled their country and entered Mizoram after their camps were overrun and captured by ethnic armed organisations and pro-democratic forces, officials said.
Of them, 359 soldiers have already been sent back to their country, they said.
While 104 Myanmar army personnel were evacuated from different places in Mizoram and sent to the border town of Moreh in Manipur by Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopters in November, 255 soldiers were moved via the Lengpui airport by Myanmar Air Force planes on January 2 and January 9.
Mizoram shares a 510-km long border with Myanmar.