Regime forces killed a fifth-grade student and a member of a People’s Defence Team (PDT) in Sagaing Region’s Khin-U Township on Wednesday, according to local sources.
The student, 14-year-old Ye Min Naung, was shot dead at a farm near the village of Kan Tharyar as he attempted to flee a column of around 70 junta troops, a resident of the village told Myanmar Now.
“The people living there were hiding in the forest. The soldiers fired a few warning shots. The boy got scared and tried to run away. That’s when they shot him,” said the villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The other victim, 25-year-old Htun Htun Win, was scouting the area when he was caught and later killed by the regime troops, said the village’s PDT leader.
“He was monitoring the movements of the junta column when he was captured,” he said, adding that Htun Htun Win was shot in the chest and beheaded by his captors.
(PDT groups, or Pa Ka Pha in Burmese, are township-based military units under the direct command of the shadow National Unity Government’s Ministry of Defence, unlike People’s Defence Force battalions, which answer to their own military commands.)
The Kan Tharyar villager remarked that the beheading was clearly intended to send a message to civilians who support the anti-regime resistance movement.
“We can’t accept their brutal behaviour, which is meant to instil fear in the public,” he said.
Both bodies were collected when the junta troops left the village later the same day, he added.
The column responsible for the killings was one of three that has been terrorising residents of Khin-U and neighbouring townships since late last week.
Another column that raided the village of Mone Hla in northern Khin-U Township on Wednesday came under attack from local resistance forces, triggering heavy shelling and airstrikes, sources there said.
During the air raid, some local defence team members were killed and some lost contact, according to the information officer of the Khin-U Township PDT.
“A resistance fighter and a civilian were killed, but the number of casualties could be higher. We don’t know the exact details, because the soldiers have not left yet,” he said.
The third column, which has been based along the Shwebo-Myitkyina road in the north-east of Khin-U Township, reportedly carried out arson attacks in the village of Thauk Kan on Wednesday.
According to the Khin-U Township PDT’s latest figures, junta forces have torched a total of 1,856 houses in 47 villages in the township since the military seized power in February 2021.
The regime has also killed 218 locals and resistance fighters and arrested 143 in Khin-U since the coup, according to the group’s data, which was last updated in the second week of November.
