Junta bombs school on Myanmar-India border, killing 17 people

Some 17 people were killed, including six children, in a military airstrike on a school just outside the town of Khampat, on Sagaing Region’s border with India, on Sunday, locals said. The aerial attack occurred at 10:30am in Ward 5 of Kanan village, near the school and its sports grounds. The ethnic Chin community is located in an area of Tamu Township that has been administered by the publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG) since anti-junta forces seized Khampat in early November. “[The military] dropped 250-pound bombs—they dropped two each time, and did it twice, for a total of four bombs,” an official from a Tamu-based resistance group told Myanmar Now. The bombings were reportedly carried out moments apart. By Monday afternoon, 17 people were reported dead; the six slain minors were aged 15 or under. Residents were reportedly preparing for church when they fled the attacks, and many were killed as they were seeking safety. The bodies of three victims of the junta’s January 7 airstrike on Kanan village (Supplied) While there were initially 11 confirmed casualties, residents and members of local defence forces participating in the rescue efforts said that several more people were injured, among whom were multiple victims who had succumbed to their wounds within a day of the assault. “Most of the injured people have lost limbs,” the resistance official said on Sunday, adding that some missing people were still unaccounted for at that time. Kanan is located next to the strategic India-Myanmar Friendship Highway, separated from the town of Khampat by a 300-foot bridge. Photos obtained by Myanmar Now showed that the village’s high school and four nearby houses suffered serious damage in the bombings. A house in Kanan village destroyed in the junta’s January 7 airstrike (Supplied) After an alliance of resistance groups that included the NUG-led People’s Defence Force and the Kachin Independence Army overtook Khampat two months ago, the military launched a ground offensive in December to try to recapture the town. They were unsuccessful, forced to retreat after nearly a week of intense fighting. The resistance has also taken and maintained control of the Sagaing Region towns of Kawlin, Shwe Pyi Aye, and Mawlu.

Junta bombs school on Myanmar-India border, killing 17 people

Military aircraft drop multiple bombs on a village adjacent to the Khampat, a Sagaing Region town under the control of the resistance

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