Myanmar’s military unleashed a series of airstrikes and drone attacks on Buddhist monasteries in eastern Bago Region earlier this week, killing at least one woman and forcing hundreds of villagers to flee, according to resistance sources.
The attacks began on Monday and continued into the following day, targeting two villages in Bago’s Nyaunglebin Township, the sources said.
Nyaungpingyi, a resistance-held village east of the town of Nyaunglebin, was attacked on both days, while Pyinyae West, a village two miles to the north, was hit on Tuesday, a member of the anti-junta People’s Defence Force (PDF) told Myanmar Now.
Both villages are located near Puzunmyaung, a village in the Sittaung River Valley under the control of regime forces.
The first attack took place at around noon on Monday, targeting the Aye Myat Aung Monastery in Nyaungpingyi. Several buildings in and around the monastery were destroyed by bombs dropped from planes and drones, as well as by machine-gun fire, the PDF source said.
The next day, the Kyaung Thit Monastery in Nyaungpingyi was also bombed by a junta aircraft, according to a statement from the Karen National Union (KNU), which claimed that four civilians were injured during the attack.
The only confirmed fatality was reported in Pyinyae West, where a bomb dropped by a drone at around 12:30pm on Tuesday killed a 69-year-old woman living next to the village monastery.
The PDF source noted that the attacks coincided with the local bean harvest. “The people here grow beans for their livelihood. That’s why the military did this now,” he said.
The aerial assaults came just days after PDF forces based along the Sittaung River launched an attack on a junta outpost in Pazunmyaung, which is just a mile west of Nyaungpingyi.
The PDF succeeded in capturing a number of weapons in that battle, which took place on January 23, but withdrew without occupying the outpost. Both sides suffered casualties, sources said.
The regime often target schools, hospitals, and monasteries in resistance-held areas, as they are sometimes used by anti-junta fighters as temporary bases. Last Sunday, an attack on a village school in Mandalay Region’s Myingyan Township left 12 resistance fighters and six civilians dead.
In a statement released on Thursday, the regime denied that it had carried out airstrikes in Nyaunglebin or in neighbouring Shwegyin Township to the east. It claimed that resistance forces were responsible for any casualties or damage to property in these areas.
Shwegyin Township, which is largely under the control of the KNU’s Brigade 3, was among the first places in Myanmar to experience airstrikes in the wake of the February 2021 coup.
