The military launched airstrikes on multiple sites in Sagaing and Magway regions in recent days, following ground battles with resistance forces, local sources said.
A member of the anti-junta People’s Administration Team in Sagaing’s Htigyaing Township said that aircraft from Tada-U airport in Mandalay opened fire on a site near Ah Lel Taw village on Sunday for around 30 minutes.
That morning, a clash had broken out between junta troops and the local People’s Defence Force chapter at the site, 10 miles north of Htigyaing town. Locals claimed that five resistance fighters were injured, and that Myanmar army soldiers set fire to several homes in Ah Lel Taw and another nearby village, Ingyin Kone.
On Monday afternoon, two more fighter jets dropped a total of 12 bombs on another village located next Ah Lel Taw—Lay Thar—the local administration team member told Myanmar Now.
“The bombs were dropped on the monastery and the school in Lay Thar, and that is basically all we know at the moment,” he explained. “No one was badly injured or killed but there are some people who were hit by shrapnel.”
Some 3,000 residents of Htigyaing villages including Ah Lel Taw, Lay Thar and Ingyin Kone have been displaced by military assaults in the area over the past week.
An attack by an Mi-35 combat helicopter ended an attempt by allied resistance forces in Magway Region’s Pauk Township to overrun a junta police station on Saturday.
Two hours after ambushing the site in Kaing Lel village at 6:30am, the guerrilla groups were forced to withdraw during the subsequent airstrike.
“We were trying to get past the final bunker from which they were firing machine guns at us when a Mi-35 aircraft fired not just at the base, but also into the village and at the surrounding hills, so we had to retreat,” said Min Min, the secretary general the Yaw Defence Force—one of the groups involved in the attack on the station.
There were two casualties among the resistance forces, he told Myanmar Now, estimating that up to half of the 20 junta personnel present at the site may have also been killed.
“[The Myanmar army soldiers] are not at that station anymore. They’ve already abandoned it because they were afraid of another attack,” Min Min said.
Myanmar Now is not able to independently verify the accounts of the incidents.
