The Myanmar junta launched airstrikes and deployed troop reinforcements in northern Shan State and Mandalay Region in recent days as it tried to recover lost outposts from an alliance of ethnic armed organisations and anti-coup resistance forces.
The junta’s air force carried out the strike on the headquarters of Brigade 6 of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Muse Township, northern Shan State on Friday afternoon.
Members of the ethnic armed organisation were reportedly killed in the junta’s aerial attack on the KIA base, located in Nam Aum village tract on the Muse-Lashio road in Muse District’s Milestone 105 commercial zone.
Photos released following the attack showed that several structures near the KIA base caught fire and sustained significant damage.
“There were some casualties,” one member of the KIA confirmed.
Myanmar Now tried to contact spokespersons for the KIA by phone to request more detailed information on the incident, but did not receive a response.
Col. Naw Bu, a KIA spokesperson, told other news outlets that the KIA had not confirmed the number of casualties.
According to posts on pro-junta propaganda channels on social media, a large number of KIA personnel were killed during the airstrike.
The bombing occurred amid extensive and ongoing clashes between army troops and KIA forces in and near northern Shan State.
KIA forces intercepted a junta column near Naung Swe village in northern Shan State’s Kutkai Township last Wednesday.
On Thursday, one day before the junta attack on the KIA command post, Battalion 36 of the KIA’s Brigade 6 had captured a strategically important junta hill outpost in Nam Kut village, about 10 miles southwest of the town of Mongko near the border with China. The KIA fighters killed several dozen junta soldiers as well as seizing weapons and a stockpile of ammunition.
The military council released a statement claiming the base had been attacked from three directions, adding that the military was trying to retake the base after being forced to withdraw from it.
KIA fighters also reportedly forced the military to abandon one of their outposts on Saturday near Nam San Yang village in Kachin State’s Waingmaw Township, after having carried out assaults on the base since July.
At least 30 displaced civilians–including 11 children–were killed near Laiza, Kachin State on the Chinese border earlier this month, in an explosion that the military council claimed was accidental. The KIA maintains that the incident, which took place near their main headquarters in the state, was an attack by the military.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), another ethnic armed group operating in Shan State, said in a statement on Saturday that their troops clashed with junta soldiers for hours in an area between the villages of Sei Nay and Hpar Pyant in Namhkan Township, located in the northern part of the state.
The TNLA said they retrieved the body of a dead junta soldier along with a gun and ammunition from that clash.
Meanwhile in Mogok Township, Mandalay Region, which borders Shan State, the junta deployed ground forces and aircraft to retake two army posts from a coalition of People’s Defence Forces (PDF) and TNLA fighters on Saturday afternoon.
Junta light infantry, including troops under the command of Light Infantry Division 88, advanced towards the area where PDF-TNLA forces were stationed near the village of Upper Nyaung Kone, nine miles east of the town of Mogok on that day, according to PDF sources. The soldiers clashed with the PDF and TNLA forces for an hour starting at 1pm.
A few hours later, junta aircraft bombed the site of battle seven times, said the commander of PDF Battalion 1223, which operates under the command of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG).
“They launched aerial assaults non-stop. The first bombing targeted the village, and the rest hit the hill areas where they thought we were stationed,” commander La Yaung said.
In the Saturday statement, the TNLA said that around 10 houses were destroyed in the aerial assaults.
Around 5pm, the military advanced through the area, and soldiers stationed at the outpost in Hpyu Yaung village, located 2.8 miles northwest of Upper Nyaung Kone, fired dozens of heavy artillery shells in the direction of the battle, according to the TNLA statement.
The PDF-TNLA alliance had seized the two junta outposts in Mogok Township in September as part of Operation Moe Lone Hmine–Burmese for “overcast sky”– a campaign launched by the NUG throughout its northern command area, which comprises all of upper Myanmar.
Additional reporting by Moe Oo.
