Charity hospital damaged in junta arson attack in Budalin Township

Junta troops conducting counteroffensive raids torched a health facility providing lifesaving services to poor communities in Sagaing Region’s Budalin Township on Tuesday, local resistance sources said. According to Dr. Zay, the sponsor of Budalin Township’s People’s Administration Organisation (PAO), the force involved in the raids had advanced to the south from a base in Budalin, planning its manoeuvres based on intelligence from the leader of a local resistance force who had defected to the junta. “That area has ravines and gorges, and you can’t direct military advances there easily without guidance. A leader from the Local People’s Defence Force staying in that area joined the Northwestern Command as a collaborator,” Dr. Zay said, referring to the Myanmar junta’s Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters in Monywa, Sagaing Region. “After changing sides, he accompanied the army troops on their advance and showed them the routes, according to eyewitnesses,” he added. The charity hospital, which offers free medical treatment to people in need, opened in early 2023 but was forced to limit its operations this year due to the threat of junta aerial attacks, according to Dr. Zay. “We stopped admitting inpatients and only treated outpatients. We stopped doing surgeries,” Dr. Zay said. “For safety reasons, we closed everything but the outpatient department.” The junta counteroffensive appears to have targeted the villages of Shwe Taung, Pauk Sein Pauk, Htan Taw, and Kan Thar in Budalin Township. The precise extent of damage to the hospital and surrounding homes has so far been difficult to verify because of failures in phone and internet connections amid the raids. The charity hospital operated on funds from civilian donors with a staff of around 13 healthcare workers including two doctors, treating people displaced by war and civilians injured by artillery and airstrikes. It served around 1,000 patients during its two years of operation. The hospital was able to conduct some surgeries successfully despite limited resources and difficult conditions, locals said. A patient receiving medical treatment (Photo: Supplied) The Myanmar military is known to have targeted hospitals and clinics in previous airstrikes. Since August, the military regime has restricted the shipment of medicines and other essential goods to resistance-controlled areas of Sagaing Region. Travel restrictions and conscription inspections at road checkpoints have hindered civilians from going to the junta-controlled towns of Budalin and Monywa for healthcare in Sagaing Region, making them dependent on local hospitals and clinics. “Some do manage to go to the towns, but the majority of the locals mainly rely on hospitals in resistance territories,” a Budalin Township resident explained. “Currently they have to depend on local nurses and midwives, and health supervisors in the villages. If the local nurses can’t handle it, they have to go to hospitals and clinics operating in the area.” Budalin Township is located only 15 miles north of Monywa and the regime forces’ Northwestern RMC headquarters but has remained a stronghold for the resistance. The Myanmar military, having lost ground to resistance and ethnic armed groups on multiple fronts, launched counteroffensive operations in mid-August to recapture territory. About 100 junta troops from the Northwestern RMC advanced into Budalin last month and initiated a series of raids on nearby villages, also telling local civilians to vote in elections that the military regime plans to hold in December of this year. Junta shelling and paramotor attacks killed three people in rural villages west of Budalin on August 26. Since Myanmar’s February 2021 military coup, junta airstrikes have killed 3,405 people and destroyed 274 schools, 106 hospitals and clinics, and 483 religious buildings, according to an August report from the publicly mandated National Unity Government. Construction of the charity hospital in Budalin Township (Photo: Supplied)

Charity hospital damaged in junta arson attack in Budalin Township

The regime troops were reportedly relying on information from a resistance defector to plan the raids and arson attacks that led to the hospital’s destruction

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