Two people, including a three-year-old child, were injured in the northern Sagaing Region town of Indaw on Tuesday after regime forces fired heavy artillery in response to an explosion targeting a local election office.
The Indaw Urban Guerrilla Force, a group operating under the command of the Indaw Township People’s Defence Force (PDF), claimed responsibility for the blast.
“The building wasn’t damaged at all, as our intention was just to send them a warning. However, the junta forces retaliated by firing heavy weapons in random directions,” a spokesperson for the group told Myanmar Now.
A local resident said that two shells landed inside a cemetery on the outskirts of the town, while a third fell near its market. Both victims—the child and a 30-year-old man—sustained only minor injuries, he added.
“They were just grazed. The shell came down near the entrance to the market. No one was injured by the shells that hit the cemetery,” he said.
Security was reportedly tight in Indaw a day after the attack on the election office.
“The town was flooded with soldiers this morning. They were literally everywhere, conducting searches,” said the Indaw local, speaking on Wednesday.
Junta gunfire triggered by a resistance attack also caused a civilian casualty in another part of the country earlier this month.
On January 1, a seven-year-old girl was killed when soldiers stationed in a village school in Magway Region’s Seikphyu Township opened fire after being hit by a drone attack.
Earlier this month, the regime began the process of updating voters lists in preparation for an election that it plans to hold later this year. Since then, there have been multiple reports of attacks targeting officials involved in the election effort.
On January 9, a resistance attack on officials collecting voter data in Tanintharyi Region’s Launglon Township reportedly left a police private dead and one other person injured.
Four days later, a village administrator and a female clerk were killed in a similar attack in Mon State’s Thaton Township. A ward administrator in Mandalay was also shot dead on Sunday.
At least seven non-lethal bomb blasts were reported in Yangon and Mandalay last week. In Magway Region’s Yesagyo Township, members of a local PDF group set fire to an immigration office and briefly detained four officials.
The shadow National Unity Government declared last week that it would be filing terrorism charges against officials working with the military to hold junta-controlled elections.
