YANGON: A petrol bomb was thrown at the lakeside Yangon compound ofMyanmar´s leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday while she was away from herhome, a government spokesman said.
“It was a petrol bomb,” spokesman Zaw Htay confirmed to AFP, without givingfurther details on a possible motive for a small but rare attack.
The petrol bomb caused minor damage. But the attack on the villa where SuuKyi was held for long years of house arrest by the former junta is hugelysymbolic.
Suu Kyi has increasingly attracted the ire of the international communityover her perceived failure to speak up on behalf of Myanmar´s RohingyaMuslim community.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled a brutal military crackdown in northernRakhine state into refugee camps in Bangladesh since August, bringing withthem testimony of murder, rape and arson.
But inside Myanmar Suu Kyi, who swept elections in 2015, is still widelyregarded as a heroine by the majority-Buddhist population, who fondly dubher “The Lady”.
Many inside Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal “Bengali” immigrants.
Suu Kyi was in Naypyidaw at the time of Thursday´s incident and is due toaddress parliament to mark the second anniversary of her NLD governmentcoming to power.