BANGKOK — A bomb exploded at a bank in northern Myanmar on Wednesday, killing at least two people and wounding 22 others, military officials said. The explosion occurred in the often lawless city of Lashio, in northern Shan State, which has been torn apart by ethnic strife and battles to control smuggling networks.

Yoma Bank, one of Myanmar’s largest commercial banks, confirmed that two of its employees, Ma Maw Maw and Ma Sandar Tun, had been killed. “I heard the bomb blast and it felt like it also exploded my house,” said Min Nyunt, whose home is next to the Yoma Bank branch where the bomb went off. “Almost all of the bank has been destroyed.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but such violence occasionally strikes Myanmar’s frontier region, where armed groups from a patchwork of ethnic minorities, including the Kachin, the Shan, the Ta’ang and the Wa — have battled the Myanmar military for decades.

Fliers were distributed publicly about a month ago in Lashio, the main city in northern Shan State, quoting a warning by Senior Gen. Kyaw Than Swe from the Myanmar Military Security Department that two ethnic militias, the Kachin Independence Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, were preparing to attack the city.