
An army captain and his wife were shot and killed in Yangon’s Hlaing Township on Monday, in the latest assassination carried out by anti-regime forces in Myanmar’s largest city.
Captain Aung Naing Phyo, 35, and his wife, Ju Ju Aung, were in their car when they were attacked on Bayintnaung 9th Street in Hlaing’s Ward 2, according to locals and police sources.
“The wife was still breathing when she was found in the car, but she was losing a lot of blood,” said a local resident who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“I don’t think it’s likely she survived, and I heard later that state media said she had died,” he added.
According to a police source, Aung Naing Phyo was shot in the neck, while Ju Ju Aung had been shot in the left temple. Further details were not available at the time of reporting.
An information officer for the shadow National Unity Government (NUG)’s Yangon Region Military Command confirmed that the assassination was carried out by an urban guerrilla group based in Yangon.
“I didn’t hear anything about any of our men getting injured, so I think it’s safe to assume that there were no casualties on our side,” the information officer said on Monday.
A group calling itself ANONYMOUS Urban Guerrillas later posted on its Telegram page that it was responsible for the killing.
“Junta grunts and informants in the western district of Yangon will also share the same fate. We will not warn them again,” the group said in its statement.
Hlaing Info, a Facebook page that reports on Hlaing Township, wrote that a large number of junta troops were seen conducting searches in the area shortly after the shooting.
The assassination comes just days after the killing of San Lin, a judge in Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, who was shot dead by a guerrilla force last Friday.
The group that carried out the attack said that it wanted to “send the courts a warning” about sentencing protesters to long prison terms on charges of incitement.