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Infant killed by stray shot during assassination of Bago Region junta administrators

An eight-month-old boy was accidentally struck by a bullet as unidentified assassins attacked and shot down two village administrators on Tuesday in eastern Bago Region, south of Taungoo. 

The targets of the assassination were Soe Naing, incumbent administrator of the village of Chaung Wa in Htantabin Township, Taungoo District and his predecessor, Khin Maung Win. The child was being held in the arms of his mother, a bystander with no evident connection to the administrators.

The administrators were driving back from a trip to Taungoo when the assassins located them on the road near Ywar Thar Yar village, located in Chaung Wa village tract, five miles north of Htantabin town. An eyewitness said two gunmen on a motorbike saw the administrators in their car, overtook them, and started shooting.

“They were alone in the car and the gunmen chased them down on a motorbike and cornered them in an alleyway,” the witness said. “The current administrator was killed just outside the car, and the retired administrator was killed near someone else’s house while trying to flee.”

A woman was standing next to a nearby betel kiosk holding her baby in her arms as the shooting began, and a stray bullet struck the infant in the head.

“She was beside the chewing betel stand when it all happened. She turned around to see where the noises were coming from, and the bullet hit the child,” the witness said. “We don’t know for sure if the bullet ricocheted off the road or a car, or if it was just a stray shot.”

The mother is seen holding her critically injured infant in the hospital following the January 17 shooting (Supplied)

The infant was sent to the Htantabin General Hospital, then transferred to the Taungoo General Hospital, and finally transferred to the Naypyitaw Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, according to a spokesperson for the Save the Trees social welfare organisation based in Taungoo.

“The child was already in critical condition from the injury when we arrived,” the social welfare group spokesperson said, adding that the infant was “bleeding out, with the bullet still lodged inside his head.”

Myanmar Now contacted the parents of the infant on Wednesday and were told that the child’s body was in transit from Naypyitaw back to Ywar Thar Yar village.

No group has claimed responsibility for the assassination that resulted in the infant’s death. 

Myanmar Now contacted a spokesperson for the Bago Region’s People’s Defence Force (PDF), which operates under the direct command of the publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG), requesting details about the attack. The spokesperson could not provide information, but said that the military council regularly propagates false news to defame the PDF and cautioned against accepting their accounts uncritically.

“From what I have heard from the public and civilian agents, the two administrators were involved in an internal conflict that led to a gunfight,” the PDF spokesperson said.

Assassination attempts and attacks on junta-appointed administrators are a frequent occurrence in Bago Region. The day before Soe Naing and Khin Maung Win’s assassination, ward-level administrator Thein Lwin was shot in Kyaukkyi Township in eastern Bago, and was still hospitalised at the time of reporting.  

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