Civilian shot dead, three injured by Myanmar junta soldiers in Hpakant

Regime forces fatally shot one woman and injured three other people as they passed through a village in Hpakant Township, Kachin State on Monday, according to people living in the area. A column of around 100 troops reportedly left the Pagoda Hill in Hmaw Si Sar village at around 7am, heading southwest towards a tactical hill base in the jade-mining town of Hpakant. Several people were hit when soldiers in the column shot their firearms recklessly and indiscriminately as they advanced, locals said. People near the Pan Tin Bridge at the town entrance to Hpakant panicked and ran when they heard the gunfire, according to a local man in his 30s. When the soldiers fired their weapons again in the chaos that followed, a woman was hit in the face by a bullet, he said. The identities of the deceased woman and three other people wounded by the gunfire were still unknown, the man added. The troops that passed through Hmaw Si Zar were on their way to Hpakant to guard administrative offices and reinforce the garrison at a tactical hill base in the town. Since the beginning of this month, Hpakant and its surroundings have been the site of constant clashes between the Myanmar military and an alliance of anti-junta forces including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Kachin People’s Defence Forces (Kachin PDF). On August 23, fighters of the KIA and Kachin PDF intercepted a junta column near Nam Ma Hpyit village and claimed to have captured four prisoners as well as seizing one vehicle, five drones, and a cache of weapons and ammunition. An officer of the Kachin PDF in Hpakant said the military had targeted KIA and Kachin PDF positions with repeated drone strikes in response to the ambush, adding that battles were ongoing north of Hpakant on Monday. The military, which now controls camps along the Hpakant-Kamaing road and the eastern entrance to Hpakant, has been sending waves of reinforcements to the town, according to a local man connected to the KIA. “As the junta now controls the entire Kamaing-Hpakant road, the only attacks we can carry out along that route are guerrilla-style strikes. Since we lost control of the camps, they’ve been able to deploy large numbers of reinforcements,” the man explained. Locals said the area near the east entrance of Hpakant was eerily quiet on Monday, with most shops and stalls closed at the Hpakant Market after the junta troops’ indiscriminate shooting at civilians. Some 70 civilians have been killed in and near Hpakant since fighting escalated there in late May. While most were killed by junta artillery or airstrikes, some died in attacks by unidentified assailants, including two men shot dead in Hmaw Si Yar last Friday. Clashes and junta assaults have also occurred elsewhere in the state in the past week. On Sunday, artillery at the junta’s Northern Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters in the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina, fired on the town’s Ram Pu ward, killing a 13-year-old girl and injuring two women. While clashes sometimes occur in Waingmaw Township on the opposite bank of the Ayeyarwady River from Myitkyina, locals said there was no fighting underway at the time of the shelling and that the attack was entirely unprovoked. Clashes are also ongoing in Bhamo in southern Kachin State, where the junta air force reportedly carried out a bombing raid on Monday morning. Myanmar Now has yet to reach KIA spokesperson Colonel Naw Bu with queries about the state of battle and number of casualties in Bhamo and Hpakant. Forces led by the KIA launched a major offensive against the military in March of last year, ultimately taking over more than a dozen towns in Kachin State as well as the nearby township of Mabein in northern Shan State.

Civilian shot dead, three injured by Myanmar junta soldiers in Hpakant

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