The military has repeatedly set fires in Nyaung Pin Gyi village in Sagaing Region’s Salingyi Township since occupying it last week, and fatally shot one resident on Wednesday, according to local resistance forces.
Salingyi GZ, a people’s defence team operating in the area, claims that when three displaced residents returned to the village to examine the damage from recent fighting, one of them was shot dead between two Naung Pin Gyi wards at around 9am.
“One of them was shot in the head and died on the spot. We still haven’t retrieved the body. The other two were shot in the arm and thigh,” said Pan Kar, a spokesperson for Salingyi GZ.
Local sources were unable to provide names or ages for the victims.
The Nyaung Pin Gyi village police station came under attack by an alliance of local anti-junta resistance teams, who killed five armed personnel and raided the station for weapons and ammunition, on the evening of June 9.
Shortly afterwards, a junta column of more than 100 soldiers arrived in Nyaung Pin Gyi from their base across the Chindwin River in Monywa, the Sagaing Region capital, stationed inside the village, and began setting fire to civilian homes.
Nyaung Pin Gyi is a large village of around 700 households with a high school and market, located on the west bank of the Chindwin opposite Sagaing Region’s capital, Monywa. The military’s six-day series of arson attacks has reportedly destroyed some 200 houses.
Thousands of locals from Nyaung Pin Gyi, Ywar Shae, and other nearby villages have been forced to flee their homes.
The majority of Nyaung Pin Gyi’s residents have been displaced, and 10 were taken captive by the military while trying to return to the village to retrieve essential items from their homes. The military also tortured and killed a local defence team member they had caught the week before the attack on the police station.
