Myanmar imposes death penalty on border post attacker

YANGON, Myanmar – A court in western Myanmar has sentenced to death a man arrested for his part in an attack on a border guard post that triggered a crackdown by security forces on the country's Muslim ethnic Rohingya minority.

The state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar reported Tuesday that the Sittwe District Court sentenced a man named Urumu for murder for the Oct. 9 attack on an outpost on Rakhine state's border with Bangladesh that killed one officer.

Attacks on two other outposts that same night killed eight other guards. The government responded with counterinsurgency operations in northern Rakhine that human rights groups charge has involved rapes, the burning of homes and the killings of possibly hundreds of civilians. The government denies the allegations.