Around 1,000 Myanmar army soldiers have launched a series of recent assaults on the civilian population of Bago Region’s Taungoo District, where resistance forces killed two junta intelligence officers last week.
Two squadrons from the anti-coup People’s Defence Force (PDF) intercepted the officers as they travelled along roads near a major highway on January 22, killing them and two others who were in the same vehicle; they were reportedly posing as weapons buyers for the resistance.
The targets were identified as Maj Than Htut, who served in the No. 1 Military Security Affairs Auxiliary Unit in Yangon, and Sgt Myint Aung. The PDF claimed that Than Htut played a significant role in the operation of Yangon’s interrogation centres, and that both he and Myint Aung were responsible for the arrests of urban guerrilla force members who they identified through undercover work.
Shortly after the PDF’s fatal highway attack, troops from Light Infantry Divisions (LIDs) 66 and 77 broke into three columns and began raiding communities in the area’s surrounding hills, known as the Bago Yoma, according to an information officer from the region’s PDF.
“The local villagers have been displaced. The military has been forcing civilians to act as porters for them, as well as torching their houses and farming huts. Arrests are taking place on a daily basis,” the spokesperson explained. “They’ve been focusing their attacks on the Bago Yoma ever since the intelligence officers got killed.”
The columns have systematically targeted villages along the eastern shore of the Sittaung River in Bago’s Yedashe Township, detaining men from the communities and requiring them to do forced labour. Troops manning military checkpoints on a bridge across the Sittaung have also reportedly been extorting money from locals.
The PDF spokesperson said that he did not know exactly how many civilians had fled or been detained nor how many homes had been destroyed in the army’s assaults.
“People don’t even dare to keep their lights on during these raids,” a 40-year-old resident of the area told Myanmar Now. “The military just takes anyone they see and uses them as porters. Even older children have not been spared from this.”
Most of the male population of the area has fled in order to avoid arrest, he added.
The three military columns combing the area have been searching the forests to the east and west of the Bago Yoma for PDF bases.
In Nattalin Township, to the west of Yedashe and in Thayawady District, the Bago PDF spokesperson said that clashes had taken place between multiple squadrons from his resistance group and the military on January 26 and 27, noting that the junta forces had fired heavy artillery at area villages “all night long.”
According to a statement released by the resistance group, six Myanmar army soldiers were killed in these battles and nine wounded. It was not known at the time of reporting if the PDF also suffered casualties.
The junta did not answer Myanmar Now’s calls for comment on its operations in Bago.
