Following a broad, coordinated assault over several days, an alliance of anti-junta armed groups seized full control of Kawlin, a district-level administrative seat in upper Sagaing Region, on Monday morning.
Junta soldiers raised a white flag of surrender at around 8am on Monday at the Kawlin Township administrative office, their last line of defence, after a series of attacks on the military’s positions throughout the township starting Friday morning.
According to a statement issued by the ministry of defence for the publicly mandated, anti-junta National Unity Government, the allied forces had decisively defeated junta troops stationed at the town’s land registry office, Myanma Economic Bank branch, police station, high school, and general administration office. They also reportedly captured dozens of weapons and a substantial supply of ammunition.
This marks the first occasion on which resistance forces and their allies successfully captured a district’s principal town, the NUG’s statement said.
“This is the first time we managed to seize full control of a district-level town. We have plans to do the same to other towns as well,” said Maung Maung Swe, deputy secretary of the NUG’s ministry of defence.
Maung Maung Swe confirmed that the forces that took control of Kawlin included members of the People’s Defence Forces (PDF)—the armed wing of the NUG—as well as other allied groups but did not provide further information.
The NUG has not yet detailed a plan for maintaining control of the town in its public statements.
Maung Maung Swe quoted an account from a member of the PDF’s Battalion 1, who said: “We are still conducting rescue and area-clearing operations as some of our men died in the fighting and some locals were killed by junta airstrikes. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
Information available to Myanmar Now suggests that more than 60 junta personnel were killed and several were taken prisoner during the battle for Kawlin, and that at least 20 civilians were injured or killed in attacks by the regime’s air force, but exact figures have not yet been verified.
“We were finally able to take the town today because [the soldiers] ran away. Six soldiers raised a white flag and surrendered their weapons,” a Kawlin Township PDF member said.
The anti-junta fighters reportedly seized control of Kawlin’s central police station on Sunday, the third day of fighting. Resistance members also reported that they succeeded in freeing prisoners being held by the junta, but Myanmar Now has yet to confirm the details.
The Kawlin Township PDF has also reportedly been helping locals evacuate to safer areas to escape junta airstrikes.
“Conducting airstrikes on civilian targets is a war crime,” said Maung Maung Swe, adding that “there’s no turning back now” for the people displaced by the attacks.
According to the 2014 consensus, Kawlin Township has a population of nearly 150,000. It is still unconfirmed how many of the township’s residents fled during the recent fighting.
A man whose family was displaced told Myanmar Now on Monday that the junta carried out at least four airstrikes on Friday, the first day of fighting, and seven to 10 each day while the battle continued.
“There are only a few people left in the town. They’re mostly staying at the monasteries. Those of us who fled were taking our own lives in our hands. Even as we fled, we felt we had as much chance of dying as surviving,” he said.
The military council, which cut off power and phone connections to the town during the fighting between Friday and Monday, has yet to release any public statement regarding the events in Kawlin.
Beginning in the last week of October, the tripartite Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed organisations—which is made up of the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army—began carrying out a sweeping offensive against military targets across northern Shan State, dubbed Operation 1027.
The alliance claims to have captured four towns and more than 100 junta bases and outposts in the 10 days since initiating Operation 1027. Resistance forces have launched assaults against the military in Myanmar’s central and northern areas at the same time.
Captain Zin Yaw, a former army officer who defected from the military after 20 years of service to join the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement, praised the anti-junta forces’ progress on the battlefield.
“Kawlin is the first step in central Myanmar,” he said. “The operations in northern Shan State have been a great help to the revolution.”
