Dozens of children killed, injured in Myanmar junta’s deadliest attack in two years

Airstrikes by Myanmar’s military left at least 20 children dead and more than 50 others injured in Sagaing Region’s Depayin Township early Monday morning, according to preliminary reports. The attack was carried out at around 9:40am and targeted a middle school in Oe Htein Twin, a village about five miles north of the junta-controlled town of Sai Pyin, sources told Myanmar Now. “So far we have recovered 22 bodies—two teachers and 20 students,” said a representative of Depayin Township’s anti-regime People’s Defence Team, adding that at least 10 of the injured were in critical condition. Other sources said the death toll was likely much higher, as many bodies had not yet been retrieved, including some that had been torn apart by the blasts. The victims were mostly children in the fifth to tenth grades at the school. Fifteen of the dead children, some of whom were as young as seven years old, were girls, sources said. “More than 50 students sustained injuries. We are still transporting the wounded,” said a local man assisting the victims. According to residents of the area, there was no ongoing military activity near the site of the attack. However, pro-junta Telegram channels claimed that the airstrikes had destroyed a resistance hideout near Oe Htein Kwin. Monday’s attack came after a weekend of deadly aerial assaults on resistance strongholds in other parts of Sagaing Region, as well as in neighbouring Mandalay Region. A man looks inside a school building damaged in a bombardment carried out by Myanmar’s military on Oe Htein Twin, a village in Sagaing Region's Depayin Township, on May 12 (Photo: AFP) On Saturday, at least 12 people were killed and five others critically injured when a junta warplane dropped bombs on the village of Ywar Taw Kone in Sagaing’s Wetlet Township, about 40 miles southeast of Depayin, according to sources. “The village was supposed to be holding its annual pagoda festival. It was called off, but nearly everyone was there when the airstrike hit the centre of the village, so the casualties were high,” said an information officer for the Wetlet Township People’s Defence Force. “We were able to recover nine bodies, but the remains of three victims couldn’t be retrieved,” he added. According to a local man, the target of the attack may have been a Starlink internet shop in the centre of the village. “The military may have believed there were resistance members inside the Starlink shop, which they assume is run by them. However, it was actually run by local villagers, and only villagers use it,” the man said. Several other villages in Wetlet Township were also targeted over the weekend. On Sunday, an airstrike on a monastery in the village of Me Taw Kone at around 11am left at least seven people injured. There were also local media reports of a paramotor attack on a village in Chaung-U Township, south of the Sagaing Region capital Monywa, on Saturday that killed three people, including a child. Damage from the airstrike that left 12 people dead in the village of Ywar Taw Kone in Sagaing’s Wetlet Township on May 10 (Photo: Wetlet Informational Network) Airstrikes also left six people dead in two villages in Mandalay Region—Kyi Tauk Pauk in Singu Township and Za Yat Kwin in Thabeikkyin Township—on Saturday, according to local sources. “They dropped bombs on Za Yat Kwin first. One person died and six were injured. Then they dropped bombs on Kyi Tauk Pauk. We heard five people were killed, including two children,” said a man living in the area. Myanmar’s military has shown no signs of easing its campaign of airstrikes across the country in recent weeks, despite declaring a ceasefire in the wake of a deadly earthquake the struck near Mandalay on March 28, killing at least 3,800 people. The regime’s mass killing of civilians in Depayin Township on Monday is the worst such incident since April 2023, when airstrikes killed around 80 people, many of them women and children, in the village of Pa Zi Gyi in Sagaing’s Kanbalu Township. It also has echoes of an attack on another school in Depayin Township in September 2022. Following that deadly assault on the village of Letyetkone, children who survived were forced to testify on camera that the village was occupied by resistance forces. In an interview with the Al Jazeera news network that took place just minutes before the earthquake on March 28, junta spokesperson General Zaw Min Tun defended the killing of children as an inevitable part of war. “Regarding children being present, they were part of groups working with terrorists. Attacks happen, and in attacks, collateral damage is unavoidable. This is the reality of war,” he said.

Dozens of children killed, injured in Myanmar junta’s deadliest attack in two years

The death toll from the attack on a school in Sagaing’s Depayin Township currently stands at more than 20 and is expected to rise

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