Junta airstrike on gold mining block in Kachin State kills dozens

An aerial bombing raid targeting gold mining sites on the south bank of the Ayeyarwady River in Kachin State’s Bhamo Township caused an estimated 30 fatalities earlier this week, according to local sources. Starting around 3pm on Tuesday and continuing for some three hours, a fighter jet and a Y-12 transport aircraft bombed mining boats and platforms relentlessly near the village of Hsin Hkan around 18 miles downriver from Bhamo. “There are hundreds of watercraft floating on the river,” a local man said. “As the water level dropped, some people set up mining platforms. Many of them were destroyed by shrapnel and five boats caught fire. We weren’t able to rescue many of the people who were on the river at the time or the sunken equipment.” According to other sources in the area, fuel drums used in the mining also exploded when the bombs fell, and around 30 people are estimated to have been killed, although an exact death toll remains unconfirmed. As of two days after the attack, locals said they had only been able to save 20 injured people and recover six bodies from the area targeted in the airstrikes. “Since the tide was rising at the time, some were carried away by the current,” the local man said of the bodies. “Some were submerged and haven’t been recovered. Nothing exact can be said yet.” “They were dropping bombs as if they were determined to kill everyone on the river,” he said of the junta aircraft that carried out the airstrikes. “They bombed without letting up, in a way that made it seem they would only stop once everyone was dead. We lost count of the number of times they circled back and continued to drop bombs.” Five of the mining boats caught fire and were destroyed in the bombing raid, according to the local man who spoke to Myanmar Now. Hundreds of gold mining boats are operating on a seven-mile stretch of the river extending from Hsin Khan through Mya Lel and Wet Thoe villages in Bhamo Township. Hsin Hkan, an important transit hub on the Shwegu-Bhamo road as well as the river, has been under the control of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) since the group and its resistance allies captured the village in May 2024. The KIA and its allies sunk one junta naval ship and destroyed another near Hsin Hkan last July as they moved upriver as part of a flotilla of 17 vessels carrying arms and supplies to junta forces in Bhamo. Four months earlier, junta airstrikes killed two KIA members manning the Hsin Hkan police station and five civilians living in the area. KIA spokesperson Colonel Naw Bu confirmed the bombing of the village had caused numerous casualties but was unable to provide a confirmed death toll or other details. Intense clashes between the military and KIA-led forces have continued in Bhamo, which remains a major front in Myanmar’s ongoing civil war. Junta airstrikes also targeted gold mining operations elsewhere in Myanmar on Tuesday, hitting sites on the Chindwin River in Sagaing Region’s Homalin Township, around 160 miles west of Bhamo, according to an officer in the township’s People’s Defence Organisation (PDO). The bombing raid lasted around 30 minutes, the PDO officer said, and the resistance organisation was treating the six miners who had been injured in the attack, including one in critical condition. A gold mining site on the Chindwin River (Photo: Supplied)

Junta airstrike on gold mining block in Kachin State kills dozens

Two junta aircraft made multiple passes over the riverbank village of Hsin Hkan, bombing mining boats and platforms on the Ayeyarwady River and killing some 30 people working on the river at the time

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