A seven-year-old girl and her mother were killed during a junta artillery attack in eastern Bago Region on Tuesday, according to local sources.
The child, Thoon Yati Phoo, and San Myo Oo, 44, died while attempting to escape the assault on Pyin Ye Gyi village in Nyaunglebin Township, in which heavy weapons were fired.
“The child was hiding in a trench during the shelling when she got hit by shrapnel in the back of her head,” a member of the local anti-junta People’s Defence Force (PDF) told Myanmar Now on Tuesday.
He added that San Myo Oo suffered an injury to her back and died en route to the regional hospital after the township hospital reportedly would not admit her.
Forty-five-year-old Kyaw Min Naing, the girl’s father, was among four people injured, the PDF member said.
A statement released on Wednesday by the Karen National Union (KNU), an ethnic armed organisation operating in the area, confirmed the junta’s shelling of Pyin Ye Gyi.
It is not known why the village was targeted, but several clashes between the military and resistance forces have been reported throughout eastern Bago in recent weeks.
On Tuesday afternoon, during clashes with area guerrilla groups, the PDF member said that the military also carried out three airstrikes targeting villages in Pyu Township, some 40 miles north.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify if there were further casualties in these attacks.
Thousands of civilians in Bago, particularly those living in areas administrated by the KNU, are believed to have been displaced by recent junta offensives in the region.
