
Five children from an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Karenni (Kayah) State’s Demoso Township trek up a steep adjacent hill at dusk, singing a well-known Burmese song.
“There must be a land in this world where there is no war,” the lyrics say, poignant in a state where more than half of its 300,000 residents have fled their homes due to Myanmar military offensives since the February 2021 coup.
After a climb of around 15 minutes, the children reach their destination: a cave in the mountainside. It is here that they sleep nightly, separated from their parents, who have deemed it the safest location in the area amid the constant threat of aerial bombings by the junta. Their forces have carried repeated strikes on such camps, as well as schools and clinics.
Nang Kyae, the mother of one of the children, said that for those in her camp, fears of the attacks grow in the dark, during which the only illumination comes from battery-powered torches.
“We can see where the planes are flying during the daytime,” she explained. “There are even people who can swiftly relay news about the locations of the aircraft. But it’s at night when we lie down to sleep that our worries intensify.”
Once such a plane is within striking distance, it is difficult to quickly wake the children in time to send them to the bunkers built to ensure that they survive the attack, Nang Kyae said.
“If you have only one or two children, it could be all right, but some have three or four children under the age of 10, and it’s really not possible.”
Instead, the adults, who have been living at the site for around a year-and-a-half, sleep in the bomb shelters, and children now retreat to the caves on the periphery.

The fear of airstrikes, and preventative measures by IDPs to protect themselves, are not unfounded or disproportionate. According to the Progressive Karenni People’s Force, a local monitoring group, in recent years such attacks have increased exponentially in the region, which includes both Karenni and southern Shan States: there were two junta airstrikes in 2021, 182 in 2022, and 179 between January and April of this year.
In April, two civilians were killed and five injured in such bombardments, the Karenni Human Rights Group reported. In May, there was one casualty and four people wounded, and in June these figures rose to five deaths and two injuries.

One of these airstrikes took place one mile from the Nang Kyae’s IDP camp, west of Demoso, on the night of April 27, when junta aircraft dropped two bombs on what is known as 11-mile hill. This was followed by artillery fire shot by the junta’s ground forces, killing a 21-year-old member of the resistance.
Two days later, the military launched another, more intensified aerial attack on the same area, reportedly dropping 11 bombs in just two hours—some weighing up to 500 pounds—as soldiers on the ground fired heavy weapons an estimated 15 times. Shops, homes and vehicles were damaged, but civilians were able to flee, resulting in no deaths but three reported injuries.
Nang Kyae was outside of the camp at the time of the assault. She remembered the sound of the first blast and the machine gun fire that followed, and how she drove her motorcycle at high speed back to the site to protect her daughter.
She recalled feeling as though she was racing the military aircraft overhead, which was also flying towards the camp.
“The airplane and my motorcycle were headed in the same direction,” Nang Kyae explained, adding that she found her daughter safe in the bunker, alongside the other civilians seeking refuge.
Forty-year-old Naing Naing, who has four children and also lives in the camp, said his family was traumatised by the April 29 attack, and still wake up startled by the smallest sounds, including footsteps on the floor of their makeshift bamboo-and-tarp dwelling.
“We can face natural dangers—I can always go out and find food for my children, like edible plants. But when weapons rain down on us, we are helpless, unable to move,” Naing Naing said.

The siege on 11-mile hill did not end in April. On May 2 and 3, the Myanmar army fired heavy artillery near the IDP camp as scout planes flew overhead up to four times daily.
It was at this time that the adults in the area searched out and identified a safer location for the displaced children to sleep—the cave—deeming the bunkers insufficient to protect the camp’s most vulnerable residents against powerful explosives.
Several other areas were targeted during this brutal period, with Pekhon Township on the Shan-Karenni state border enduring multiple attacks targeting health infrastructure and personnel. Two medical staff were killed in an airstrike in the eastern part of the township on April 7, according to resistance forces, and a new mother and her medical attendant were critically injured three weeks later on April 25 when another airstrike hit the Saung Hpway hospital. One month later, on May 27, another junta airstrike killed four Karenni medics in Demoso.
A 21-year-old woman named Pwint who lives in an IDP camp near the targeted Saung Hpway hospital, said she and her husband Tun considered fleeing after the air attack, but opted to stay—one of the only families that did so.

There was no vehicle in which to escape, Tun told Myanmar Now, pointing to a motorbike with a punctured tyre. He recounted how a fighter plane soared above the hospital, dropped its bomb, and flew away; another fighter aircraft targeted a fleeing car, firing upon it.
Pwint was pregnant at the time of the assault. After the hospital was bombed, she opted to give birth at home instead of in a medical facility, lest it be targeted in another aerial attack.
“If we have to die, we will die here,” her husband said.
Cpt Zay Thu Aung, an Mi-35 pilot who once flew the same fighter jets now attacking Karenni territory, defected from the air force following the coup. He condemned the recent assaults, speculating that both the reconnaissance missions and the actual airstrikes have been an attempt to intimidate the civilian population, which the military sees as the “enemy” due to the widespread support for the resistance movement.
“When an air attack is deployed, it creates confusion amongst the enemy, aiming to destroy everything they are connected to,” he explained. “The intention behind the approach of military aircraft is to instil fear in people and evoke an emotional response.”
Zay Thu Aung encouraged those trapped in the active warzone to build underground shelters to greatly increase their chances of survival in the event of airstrikes.
A local photojournalist who visited Demoso Township in June said that sleeping in such bunkers had become commonplace, noting that he spent around 25 nights in a locally-made shelter during his one month stay in the region.
There were two such structures in the area, he explained, estimating that they could comfortably hold up to 10 people, but became full “whenever planes hovered around,” particularly at night. He said he learned to distinguish the sound of passenger or transport planes from air force jets.
“Everyone became frightened when they heard a fighter jet flying close overhead. They would all come to gather at the entrance to the bunker and prepare to go in if anything happened.”
While these shelters remain a necessity for civilians on the frontlines, the ex-air force captain emphasised that for the country to experience true safety, the military dictatorship will need to be dismantled.
“If we can endure this period of time, then in the future, all of us—young and old—will be able to live in peace.”