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Myanmar rebel leader shot dead in Thai town


    MAE SOT, Thailand (Reuters) - A leader of Myanmar's biggest rebel group was shot dead at his home in a Thai border town on Thursday in an assassination immediately blamed on troops loyal to the former Burma's military junta. Mahn Sha Lar Phan, secretary-general of the Karen National Union (KNU), was shot at his two-storey wooden home by two men who arrived in a pickup truck, his neighbour Kim Suay told Reuters at the scene. He died instantly.

    "One of them walked up to the house and said in Karen 'Howare you, uncle?' Then the other man joined him after parkingthe truck and they both shot him with two pistols," she said,her voice shaking with emotion.

    In an interview with Reuters on Monday, he had predicted apossible increase in violence ahead of a constitutionalreferendum in the former Burma in May.

    However, the KNU and its armed wing, the Karen NationalLiberation Army (KNLA), are riven by internal feuds and lethalvendettas.

    His son Hse Hse, another senior member of the predominantlyChristian Karen rebel movement, blamed a Buddhist Karensplinter group which brokered a truce with the Myanmar junta inthe mid-1990s.

    "This is the work of the DKBA and the Burmese soldiers,"Hse Hse said, referring to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.

    The Karen have been fighting for independence in the hillsof eastern Myanmar for the last 60 years, one of the world'slongest-running insurgencies.

    Thai police said they had the registration number of thetruck and were setting up roadblocks around Mae Sot, a "wildwest" frontier town of refugees, illegal migrants and gemdealers, to try to catch the two killers.

    (Reporting by Somjit Rungjumratrussamee; Writing by NoppornWong-Anan; Editing by Ed Cropley and Sanjeev Miglani)