Soldiers fatally shot a three-year-old child on Thursday evening while raiding his mother’s home in Khin-U, Sagaing Region in search of anti-junta guerrillas, according to local resistance sources.
The child, Thuta Nyi Nyi Htet, was one of a pair of twins and was killed at around 11pm during the raid on his mother’s house in Mya Kan Thar ward in the town of Khin-U, Sagaing Region.
The soldiers also shot and killed a neighbour in his 50s named U Bein living in the house next door, and left his 17-year-old son Nga Wyne with a gunshot wound to the leg, according to members of two resistance groups active in the area.
“They just started shooting as soon as they came,” said the spokesperson for the anti-junta Black Eagle urban guerrilla group, referring to the soldiers.
After the raid, the soldiers took the child’s mother Thida Oo, 37, captive along with Thuta Nyi Nyi Htet’s twin brother Thuta Ko Ko Htet, and arrested one of several guerrillas who was at the house at the time, according to the Black Eagle spokesperson.
The military also seized three of the guerrillas’ firearms and took the dead bodies of Thuta Nyi Nyi Htet and Bein, he said.
The Black Eagle spokesperson added that members of his group had been staying at Thida Oo’s house in Khin-U for a while before the raid. Apart from the guerrilla who was detained, four members of the group managed to escape successfully although one of them, the leader, sustained severe injuries.
Thida Oo reportedly has relatives in the anti-junta armed resistance.
shown with seized weapons during her arrest, posted on pro-junta social media channels.
A spokesperson for another resistance group said there were unconfirmed rumours that the soldiers had taken the detainees to a pharmacy in Khin-U, where soldiers had maintained a base since the 2021 coup.
“They didn’t even ask questions, they just started shooting as soon as they arrived outside,” the spokesperson said. “So it appears they had some solid intel.”
Black Eagle is an urban guerrilla force based in Khin-U that has carried out several attacks against regime targets in the town.
Local resistance groups believe the military obtained the information that guerrillas were staying at Thida Oo’s house while interrogating a Khin-U resistance member whom they captured on August 16 on his way to Shwebo.
Posts on pro-junta propaganda channels on social media claimed Thida Oo was a “terrorist” and that locals had informed the military that she was abetting armed resistance members. They also said that several explosive devices and four firearms, including a sniper rifle, had been seized from Thida Oo’s home.
The posts made no mention of the deaths or other arrests.
While resistance forces control much of the territory in Khin-U Township’s rural areas, junta forces have established bases throughout the township, including villages to the north, east, and west of town and within the town’s urban wards, due to its strategic importance in their ongoing campaign against the armed resistance to the coup regime.
