Thirty-nine Myanmar army personnel, who have taken shelter at the Zokhawthar Police Station in Mizoram’s Champhai district close to the international border, are likely to be sent back after talks with the military government there, a senior police officer said on Tuesday.

The Myanmar Army men were forced to flee their country following a combined assault from three Myanmarese militant outfits close to the border with India.

A senior state Police official here said that the matter was intimated to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the MHA instructed that the Tatmadaw personnel should be handed over to the Assam Rifles guarding the 404-km-long Mizoram-Myanmar international border.

“It is most likely that the Ministry of External Affairs will make arrangements to hand over the Myanmar army personnel to the Myanmar military government through the Assam Rifles,” the official said.

The Tatmadaw (as Myanmar’s military is called) personnel, who were deployed in two villages adjoining Mizoram, crossed the border and went to the Zokhawthar Police Station in Champhai district on Monday evening after the militants overran the Khawimawi Tatmadaw camp.

They surrendered at the police station along with all their arms and ammunition, sources said.

The clashes between the Myanmar army and the militants had started on Sunday night, the sources said.

They said that the combined forces of civil militia groups Kachin Independent Army (KIA), Chin National Army (CNA) and the Chin Defence Force (CDF), have also seized the Rihkhawdar camp close to the border and captured seven Myanmar soldiers.

“The rest might have been killed in the attacks on the camp and we cannot have any information on how many Myanmar soldiers died in the camp,” they said.

As reported earlier, eight people including a 51-year-old refugee taking shelter in Myanmar border Zokhawthar village, were killed in the clashes between the Tatmadaw and the ultras.

(With UNI inputs)