Clashes escalate in southern Rakhine State as AA moves to take strategic town

Anti-regime forces led by the Arakan Army (AA) targeted junta positions near the entrance of the town of Gwa in southern Rakhine State on Thursday, sparking clashes, local sources said. Gwa residents told Myanmar Now that fighting broke out in two small villages on the northern edge of Gwa, a junta-controlled town with strategic importance due to its location on a major route between Rakhine State and Ayeyarwady Region.The two villages near the entrance to the town, Ya Haing Ku Toet and Ya Haing Kwin, serve as frontline defensive positions for the military regime and are fortified to block the AA’s advances. “We heard shelling and gunfire throughout the night until 5am,” a local resident said. “But the military has been firing heavy artillery from their bases since this morning.”On Thursday night, the junta launched a drone strike targeting a monastery in Ya Haing Ku Toet. Two days earlier, more than 60 villagers were displaced when junta troops forced them to leave their homes. “The junta soldiers ordered us to leave our village, claiming that we were from the other side,” one resident said. “So now we have to move.”Since November 2023, the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic armed group based in Rakhine State, has seized ten towns from the Myanmar military throughout the state. Since the beginning of the monsoon season, Gwa residents have often fled the town due to a shortage of food and medicine, as the military regime has restricted the transportation of various goods throughout war-ravaged Rakhine State. Fighting then spread to Gwa Township after anti-junta forces captured Thandwe in early September, leaving the area largely deserted.The AA recently seized the last junta stronghold in Maungdaw Township, taking full control of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border in early December.“When I returned to the town in October to bring my belongings, I discovered that all businesses were closed; fisheries, hotels, restaurants, and shops all shut their doors,” a displaced man from Gwa told Myanmar Now. Despite the clashes near the town entrance, a few civilians are still residing in the town. “Staying here isn’t safe for us,” the displaced man added. “We can only stay temporarily and have to flee when the fighting gets closer.”

Clashes escalate in southern Rakhine State as AA moves to take strategic town

As fighting broke out two days after army troops forced some 60 residents to leave their homes in a village north of Gwa, a junta drone strike hit a monastery in the same village

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