Junta airstrikes kill at least 28 over deadly weekend

At least 28 people were killed on Sunday when junta warplanes struck resistance-held territory across Chin and Karenni states and Mandalay Region, local sources said.Junta warplanes carried out two separate aerial assaults on Mawchi, a tin-mining area in Karenni State’s Hpasawng Township on Sunday, killing at least 25 people, including five children. “So far, 23 bodies have been recovered, including five children. Among them were six women, including two girls," Banya Khung Aung from the Karenni Interim Executive Council (IEC, a local administrative body run by the Karenni resistance, told Myanmar Now. “We have four bodies that have not been identified, and two people are still missing.” At least 11 people sustained injuries in the attack, two of whom later died on Monday. The death toll is expected to rise as a few people remain unaccounted for, at the time of reporting. Early Sunday, three Y-12 aircraft bombed near a disused hospital in Mawchi’s Lo Khar Lo village, injuring two people. Hours later, junta warplanes struck a crowded neighborhood, killing dozens and destroying homes, including a kindergarten.No clashes were reported in the town, though heavy fighting continues 16 miles east in Hpasawng, where Karenni resistance forces have besieged the junta’s last base since late June.Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has increasingly turned to airstrikes and shelling to crush resistance forces, often hitting civilian areas. Rights groups say the junta’s use of airpower has become one of its deadliest tactics, killing thousands and displacing entire communities.“The military has a pattern of labeling areas outside its control as enemy territory,” Banya Khung Aung said. “Areas held by resistance forces, like Mawchi, are particularly targeted with little or no regard for civilians.” Mogok under fireOn the same day, the military also conducted an airstrike on Mogok, a ruby-mining town controlled by the powerful Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in Mandalay Region. The airstrike killed at least three people, including a young boy. According to the TNLA, three bombs exploded near a police station and an administration office in the eastern parts of Mogok at around 9am. “The strike hit near the TNLA’s administration office, which has been in place since the group seized the town,” a Mogok resident told Myanmar Now. “All three victims were passersby, including a father and his son.”Two days earlier, at least 21 people, including three pregnant women and children, were killed and seven others were injured when a junta warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb near a monastery in an eastern residential area of the town. Junta airstrikes continued Monday on TNLA-held territory in northern Shan State, with two residential wards in Hsipaw hit in the morning, injuring at least three people, local sources said.“A bomb landed near the Tai House Hotel in Tawng Myo Ward, and another exploded in Ah Nauk Ward,” a man from Hsipaw said. “The blasts injured a 50-year-old woman and two others.” The junta also bombed residential areas in Kanpetlet, a resistance-held town in southern Chin State, around 7am on Sunday. No civilians were injured, but several houses were damaged. With fighting intensifying on multiple fronts, the military’s air campaign is exacting a rising civilian toll. Analysts warn the number of dead and wounded is likely to grow as strikes continue across resistance-held towns. A hospital in Lo Khar village, Hpasawng, is left flattened after a Myanmar military fighter struck the area, injuring two people. (Photo: Supplied)

Junta airstrikes kill at least 28 over deadly weekend

Warplanes struck crowded neighborhoods in Karenni, Chin, and Mandalay regions on Sunday, leaving dozens dead, including children

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