The Myanmar military fired on a monastery in southern Nawnghkio Township as it stepped up efforts to retake areas of and other parts of northern Shan State from the anti-junta armed group Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), according to locals and TNLA members.
The attacks on the monastery, located in Ohn Ma Thee village some 16 miles north of the town of Tawng Hkam, took place amid continuing battles in areas held by the Ta’ang armed group, also commonly called the “Ta’ang army.”
“Clashes erupted in the past few days as the military regime launched assaults,” a TNLA spokesperson told Myanmar Now on Thursday.
“The military regime carried out several aerial assaults over non-combat areas in Manton, Mogok, and Kyaukme,” the TNLA spokesperson added, referring to other townships under the group’s control in northern Shan State and neighbouring Mandalay region.
Fighting also broke out in the village of Tha Yet Cho in southern Nawnghkio Township as the TNLA attempted to recapture a strategic hilltop outpost that junta troops overran on Tuesday, according to the local media outlet Shwe Phee Myay.
The ongoing battles forced nearly 100 displaced people to flee a monastery on Tuesday near Nawnghkio Township’s Ohn Ma Thee village when it came under fire from snipers, according to the abbot of the monastery.
“We were not allowed to use the main road to flee so we had to leave our vehicles and motorcycles at the monastery,” the abbot told Myanmar Now on Wednesday.
He added that fighters from the TNLA had come to the monastery afterwards while the displaced people who had been taking shelter there moved to makeshift huts set up on nearby farmlands.
The TNLA claimed junta forces were responsible for the sniper fire targeting the monastery, which killed two displaced men who had been sheltering there.
A local social welfare volunteer said that the monastery was also hit multiple times by artillery shells on Thursday fired from a junta defensive position in Bant Bway village around three miles to the south.
“It’s been two or three days since junta troops started launching assaults on Ohn Ma Thee village,” said a woman volunteering to help displaced people in Nawnghkio Township.
“They also deployed more soldiers to surround areas controlled by the Ta’ang army.”
In a statement released on Friday, the TNLA said its members had previously urged the displaced people sheltering at the monastery to leave, citing the danger of junta airstrikes and drone strikes on Ohn Ma Thee.
Ohn Ma Thee is less than 12 miles south of Nawnghkio—a town currently controlled by the Ta’ang Army—on a key trade route that links Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, to Muse, a major border hub near China.
Ohn Ma Thee was also the site of an incident last month in which a Chinese Red Cross aid convoy attempting to deliver relief to earthquake-impacted areas came under fire from junta troops. The military council admitted publicly that its troops were responsible.
The TNLA has been under persistent pressure from Chinese authorities to agree to a ceasefire with the military regime and is scheduled to attend a third round of negotiations with the junta in China’s Yunnan Province in August.
The second round of talks, which took place last month, failed to yield an agreement after the Ta’ang National Liberation Army rejected the junta’s demand to withdraw its forces from five towns it had previously taken over in northern Shan State.
