BANGKOK, Oct 20, (AP): The Chinese Consulate in Myanmar’s second-largest city has been slightly damaged by an explosive device, but there were no casualties, the military, independent media and a city resident said Saturday. No public claims of responsibility were made for the attack on Friday in Mandalay.

China is a major ally of Myanmar’s military, which came to power after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 but is now fighting fiercely against resistance forces challenging its rule. The military said in a statement sent to journalists on Saturday evening that roof tiles on the two-story Chinese Consulate were damaged by a explosion Friday afternoon.

The security forces are investigating in order to arrest the "terrorists” behind the blast, it said. The army is engaged in nationwide fighting against pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority militias. It was forced onto the defensive late last year when ethnic armed organizations dealt it major defeats in the country’s northeast, seizing important territory along the border with China.

Those gains, made by armed ethnic groups who separately maintained their own good relations with China, have weakened the army’s position all over the country, causing Beijing concern about the military government’s stability. China has reportedly sought to have some of the more powerful ethnic minority groups with which it maintains good ties to discourage the groups that seized territory in the northeast from continuing their offensive, which they launched in October last year.

China was widely believed to have initially given its tacit approval to that offensive, which was seen as a way of curbing rampant criminality, particularly large-scale online scamming carried out in enclaves, which also involved human trafficking. The criminal enterprises were largely run by ethnic Chinese, embarrassing Beijing. China, along with Russia, is a major arms supplier to Myanmar’s military.