The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), accompanied by a local People’s Defence Force (PDF), collaborated to attack two military bases and a police station in Kachin State on Thursday morning, a KIA spokesperson said.
The targets were a police station in Mohnyin Township and army bases in Hpakant and Sumprabum.
Although KIA information officer Col Naw Bu confirmed that the allied forces torched and destroyed the police station—located in Maw Han village—he did not disclose further information on the attacks on the military posts, which occurred at 3am and 9am, respectively.
The battle at the police station lasted for around two hours and left both a military and a police officer dead, as well as allowing the resistance forces to seize several weapons, according to the Kachinwaves news outlet, citing frontline sources.
Col Naw Bu was not able to confirm the number of casualties reported in the clash.
“We have received the news that they managed to seize the police station. We can confirm that much,” he told Myanmar Now.
A villager in the area told Myanmar Now that he heard fighting begin at around 3am and counted at least 10 artillery shells being fired.
Local news outlets reported that the allied forces from the sixth battalion under the KIA’s Brigade 9 and those from the PDF also attacked and occupied a military base in Jar Yar Yan village in Hpakant at the same time as the attack on the Maw Han police station.
A local man claimed that the military tactical base in Hpakant fired artillery indiscriminately at the battle site at around 5am, but Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify this.
“They fired well over 10 artillery shells. They didn’t even know where the enemy was,” he said .
The final serious clash on Thursday morning took place after the KIA forces attacked the military base in Dro Kha village in Sumprabum Township, but Col Naw Bu said later that afternoon that he did not know if the KIA had managed to overrun the post.
“The KIA may have already left. However, the situation will remain tense, of course,” he said at 2pm.
The KIA attacked five Myanmar army bases in Kachin and northern Shan states on Tuesday—the day marking one year since the country’s military coup—managing to “overrun and torch” one of the locations near Tsum Pi Yang village in Putao Township, according to Col Naw Bu.
A Tsum Pi Yang villager told Myanmar Now that around 100 locals were forced to flee the fighting as the village is located just 500 feet from the military base. He added that KIA forces had stationed themselves at the location and that a member of the military-allied militia that was also forced off the base surrendered to them with his weapons in hand.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the local updates in Tsum Pi Yang.
The military council has not released any information on the attacks on its bases.
Six explosions went off in Hpakant Township on Tuesday alone and another took place near the city development committee office on the following day. Another explosive was set near a police battalion in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina on Tuesday, and the police gunfire that followed killed a seven-year-old boy in his home at the time of the incident.
While resistance forces have been using explosives to target junta infrastructure and bases nationwide, no group had claimed responsibility for the recent bomb attacks in Kachin State at the time of reporting.
