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Tag: National Unity Government

  • 29 people killed in strike on a camp for refugees in Myanmar

    29 people killed in strike on a camp for refugees in Myanmar

    At least 29 people, including children, have died in a bomb attack on a camp for people who had to leave their homes in north-east Myanmar, close to the border with China.

    The camp is located in an area controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), which is one of several groups fighting for self-rule in the region for a long time.

    According to a KIO spokesperson, all the people who were hurt were ordinary citizens and not military personnel.

    This attack is one of the deadliest in the long conflict that has lasted for 63 years in Kachin State.

    Kachin officials say that the military has increased their attacks on areas controlled by the KIO in the past year because more Kachin people are supporting other rebel groups who are fighting against the government.

    A lot of Myanmar has been caught up in a bigger fight between different groups since the military took control in 2021 and removed the elected government. The military is using air attacks more often against towns and villages controlled by the opposition after taking control.

    The National Unity Government (NUG), which is currently living in a different country because they were forced to leave their own, has accused the military junta for the assault on the camp. They consider it to be a terrible act of war and a crime against people.

    The spokesperson for the military, Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun, said that the military did not carry out the attack.

    He said the army didn’t do anything in that place and thought that the damage was likely caused by explosives that were being stored there.
    Pictures shown by local news showed dead bodies being taken out from the collapsed building and many body bags laid next to each other.

    The attack occurred on Monday night in a camp called Mong Lai Khet. The camp is located on the outskirts of Laiza, a town near the border of China. The camp houses people who have been forced to leave their homes. This town is where the KIO (Kachin Independence Organization) has its main office.

    Some of the camp was destroyed by big explosions around midnight, according to KIO officials who spoke to the BBC.

    Video of what happened after the event shows that a lot of houses were completely destroyed and many people got hurt or killed.

    Kachin officials think that at least 11 kids are among the ones who died. In the recent attack, 56 additional people got hurt, and out of those, 44 ended up in the hospital for medical care.

    The United Nations in Myanmar expressed serious worries about news on people dying in the camp.

    “IDP camps are safe places for people seeking shelter, and it is unacceptable to harm civilians, regardless of their location,” stated on Facebook.

    The British embassy in the main city Yangon expressed shock and anger over the news of a Myanmar military attack that resulted in the death of innocent people.

    For a long time, there has been fighting near the camp because it is close to where Kachin troops and government forces are in battle.

    But people who live nearby the camp say that there hasn’t been any fighting happening close by recently.

    The attack might have happened from the sky, but Col Naw Bu of the Kachin Independence Army said the group didn’t hear any planes.

    Nearly a year ago, the Myanmar air force dropped targeted bombs on an outdoor concert at a Kachin base, causing the death of over 80 individuals.

    The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is a big and strong rebel group in Myanmar. It is the army part of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). The group has been fighting the main government sometimes since 1960 and regularly since a ceasefire ended in 2011.

    Since the takeover, the army thinks the KIA is a big danger because they are providing weapons and training to new groups that formed to fight against the military.

    KIA has been in a partnership with the Arakan Army for a long time. The Arakan Army is a rebel group that was first established in Kachin State. But starting from 2016, it has been working in Rakhine State, which is far away from the rest of the country. It has been able to compete with the military and gain control over a large part of the land.

    The latest report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that there is a continuous cycle of violent acts happening in the country, mainly perpetrated by the military.

  • Horrific fallout from a strike in Myanmar kills 100 people

    Horrific fallout from a strike in Myanmar kills 100 people

    The day after one of the bloodiest strikes since the junta’s takeover of power two years ago, relatives were still gathering the burned bodies and limbs of those slain in a military airstrike on a village in central Myanmar.

    As he approached the location of the military bombing, an eyewitness who had been hiding in a tunnel during the attack reported a sight of horror, with children dying, women wailing, and dead piled up on the ground.

    At least 100 people, including women and children, were killed after Myanmar’s military junta bombed Kanbalu township in the central Sagaing region on Tuesday, according to the Kyunhla activist group, which was at the scene. The group said at least 20 children were killed in the strike and 50 people injured.

    About 300 people had gathered in Pazigyi Village early on Tuesday morning to celebrate the opening of a local administration office, an eyewitness told CNN on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution. Families had traveled from nearby villages for the event, where tea and food was offered and which coincided with the start of the Thingyan New Year celebrations.

    Like much of Sagaing, the area is not under the control of the military junta. The new town office was being opened under the authority of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), for the people, as part of the anti-junta resistance.

    “We didn’t have any warning,” the eyewitness said. “Most of the villagers were inside the event, so they didn’t notice the jet.”

    Just before 8 a.m., a junta aircraft bombed the village where the ceremony was being held, the eyewitness and local media reported. An Mi35 helicopter then circled and fired on the village minutes later, the eyewitness told CNN.

    “When I arrived at the scene we tried to search for people still alive,” he said. “Everything was terrible. People were dying (as they were being transported) on motorbikes. Children and women. Some lost their heads, limbs, hands. I saw flesh on the road.”

    The eyewitness said he saw dozens of bodies after the attack, including children as young as five. He said he lost four family members in the strike, and a young child from his village was among the dead.

    “I saw lots of people coming onto the scene to search for their kids, crying and screaming,” he said.

    At around 5:30 p.m. the junta jets returned and shot the same place they had bombed that morning, he said.

    CNN cannot independently verify the incident but the eyewitness’s account matches reports in local media and from the NUG.

    Videos and images from the aftermath, shown to CNN from witnesses and a local activist group, also show bodies, some burned and in pieces, as well as destroyed buildings, vehicles and debris.

    Myanmar’s junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed the airstrike on Pazigyi Village and said if civilian casualties occurred it was because they were forced to help “terrorists,” Reuters reported.

    The junta has designated the NUG and resistance groups known as the People’s Defense Force in the country as terrorists.

    “At 8 a.m…. NUG (National Unity Government) and PDF (People’s Defense Force) conducted an opening ceremony of the public administration office at Pazigyi village,” Zaw Min Tun said on the military’s Myawaddy TV channel.

    “We had launched the attack on them. We were informed that PDF were killed at that event under the attack. They are opposing our government.”

    The strike was condemned internationally, with one top UN official saying global indifference to the situation in Myanmar contributed to the attack.

    “The Myanmar military’s attacks against innocent people, including today’s airstrike in Sagaing, is enabled by world indifference and those supplying them with weapons,” said Tom Andrews, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar.

    “How many Myanmar children need to die before world leaders take strong, coordinated action to stop this carnage?”

    The US Department of State said it was “deeply concerned” about the airstrikes and called on the regime to “cease the horrific violence.”

    “These violent attacks further underscore the regime’s disregard for human life and its responsibility for the dire political and humanitarian crisis in Burma following the February 2021 coup,” it said, using an alternative name for Myanmar.

    It’s been just over two years since the military seized power, ousting the democratically elected government and jailing its leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In order to crush resistance, the junta regularly carries out airstrikes and ground attacks on what it calls “terrorist” targets.

    The attacks have killed civilians, including children, and targeted schools, clinics, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. Whole villages have been burned by junta soldiers and thousands of people have been displaced in the attacks, according to local monitoring groups.

    Battles between the military and resistance groups unfold daily across Myanmar. These rebel groups, some of whom have aligned with some of the country’s long-established ethnic militias, effectively control parts of the country out of the junta’s reach.

    Resistance groups and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly accused Myanmar’s military of carrying out mass killings, air strikes and war crimes against civilians in the regions where fighting has raged, charges the junta repeatedly denies – despite a growing body of evidence.

    “They’re losing control of the country. They’re losing ground. Things are much more unstable on the ground than they’ve ever been,” the UN’s Andrews told CNN on Wednesday. “As a result of that, they’re using air power more and more and, of course, as they do so, more and more civilians are being killed.”

    On Monday, junta airstrikes hit a town in western Chin state’s Falam Township, killing nine people when bombs dropped on a school, according to local media Myanmar Now and The Irrawaddy.

    Last week, 8,000 refugees in southern Karen state fled across the border to Thailand, escaping fighting in Myawaddy township, according to a statement from Thailand’s Tak provincial office public relations department, posted to Facebook.

    In March, at least 22 people, including three monks, were killed at a monastery in southern Shan state. And a military airstrike on a school in Sagaing in September killed at least 13 people, including seven children.

    The eyewitness to Tuesday’s attack said the “situation in Myanmar is worse now.”

    “People are dying like dogs or cows. We don’t have any weapons to compare with what the military has. We need the help of the international community,” he said.