Airstrikes kill eight as Myanmar military continues effort to retake northern Shan State

The junta air force bombed three townships in northern Shan State over the past week, killing eight civilians while attempting to win back territory lost to ethnic armed groups since last year, locals said.The latest airstrikes hit a traditional rice liquor distillery in the Lashio Township village of Mae Han, at around 8:35am on Wednesday, according to residents of the township. Mae Han is located just outside the southwest entrance into Lashio, northern Shan State’s most populous city and administrative capital, which has been under the control of the Kokang ethnic armed organisation Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) since early August. “The distillery near the town entrance was bombed by a junta warplane. Firefighters extinguished the blaze but the damage was extensive,” a man from Lashio said. No civilian casualties have yet been reported from the attack. The military regime has conducted airstrikes on Lashio Township at least 20 times since the MNDAA takeover, according to local sources, targeting both urban areas and surrounding villages. Photos show the aftermath the junta airstrike on a distillery in Mae Han village, Lashio Township in mid-October (Photo: Lashio Reconstruction Facebook Page) In areas of northern Shan State occupied by another anti-junta ethnic armed organisation, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), junta airstrikes killed eight civilians and injured a dozen, according to local sources. The aerial assaults killed at least five people including an elderly woman and wounded four in Namhsan Township’s Ho Mein village on Tuesday, according to the local news outlet Shwe Phee Myay. The village is located around 19 miles north of Namhsan, a town known for tea production that the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) captured in December 2023. Another airstrike the previous morning damaged a monastery in Namhsan Township, according to the TNLA’s information team. The military has also conducted four airstrikes over the past week in the urban wards of another TNLA-controlled northern Shan State town, Nawnghkio, killing at least three civilians and injuring eight since last Thursday. Four people were injured in a series of airstrikes in the town that day. Two days later, two children and their father died on the spot when a fighter jet dropped several bombs over civilian houses in Nawnghkio’s Taung Ward on Saturday. At least three more people were injured in Pa Hat Ward on the same day during a second airstrike, and another civilian man was injured in another area of the town. Clashes have broken out repeatedly in the southernmost areas of Nawnghkio Township since the Ta’ang ethnic armed organisation captured the town in July. The group had resumed offensive operations against the military regime in northern Shan State the previous month following a five-month ceasefire.

Airstrikes kill eight as Myanmar military continues effort to retake northern Shan State

While no casualties were reported from a junta airstrike on a rice liquor distillery outside Lashio, airstrikes on the TNLA-controlled townships of Namhsan and Nawnghkio resulted in eight deaths and at least a dozen injuries

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