‘Death will follow us wherever we go,’ Rohingya civilians lament after junta targets village in major airstrike

The Myanmar junta killed 22 Rohingya civilians in an airstrike on Thar Dar village in Minbya Township early on Monday morning, residents said. “At around 1:30am, a war plane came and dropped two bombs on us,” said a 21-year-old man from the community who asked to be identified only as Ko San for security reasons. Villagers, who were asleep at the time, initially found 10 bodies, many of whom were dismembered. “Parents told us their sons and daughters were missing, but we could not find their bodies—only separate body parts everywhere,” he continued. Twenty-one people in total were found dead at the scene, and 30 more wounded. When a girl succumbed to her injuries on Tuesday, it raised the death toll to 22. “One of my nieces, a 16-year-old girl, was killed, and had wounds all over her body,” Ko San said. Many of the injured are in critical condition, he added, noting that more than half are women. Ten houses were also reportedly destroyed. Among the dead were internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had fled their homes in nearby Sin Gyi Pyin village, assuming that Thar Dar was safe as it had not seen recent intense clashes between the Myanmar military and the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army (AA), which has claimed control of the township. “There was no fighting in my village,” Ko San said of Thar Dar. “We are a Muslim village, I think, and that’s why they attacked us with airstrikes.” Others from Thar Dar repeated the same speculation to Myanmar Now. The Rohingya have been largely caught in the middle of fighting between the AA and the junta, which resumed in mid-November last year. Members of the Rohingya community have recently been forcibly conscripted into the Myanmar army, including in Rathedaung Township, where nearly 100 Rohingya youth were taken from an IDP camp and made to fight the AA. At least five were killed. More than 1 million Rohingya refugees currently live in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, most of whom fled a genocidal campaign of violence by the Myanmar army in 2017. “If they are going to kill us like this, we don’t want to stay here anymore, but we don’t have a place to run, either, so we are very worried,” Ko San explained. “It just seems like death will follow us wherever we go.” Minbya has been under the control of the AA since February 7. The ethnic armed organisation has captured seven other towns from the military in Rakhine State—Kyauktaw, Mrauk-U, Myebon, Pauktaw, Ponnagyun, Ramree and, most recently, Rathedaung. The group also seized Paletwa in southern Chin State. In retaliation, the junta has targeted these areas with artillery fire and aerial bombings. Members of the publicly mandated National Unity Government, such as deputy human rights minister Aung Kyaw Moe, have called on the junta to be held accountable for atrocities in Rakhine State. UN Secretary General António Guterres said on Monday that he was alarmed by reports of the Minbya airstrike, and concerned about the deteriorating rights situation in Myanmar and the detention and forced military recruitment of Rohingya youth by the regime.

‘Death will follow us wherever we go,’ Rohingya civilians lament after junta targets village in major airstrike

The military bombs a Rohingya village in Rakhine State’s Minbya Township, killing more than 20 people, even though no recent fighting with the Arakan Army had occurred in the location

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