Junta forces operating on land and a river-going flotilla killed one civilian and injured three, including a child, near the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River in Madaya Township, Mandalay Region this week.
Thein Lin, a resident of the township’s Nyaung Oke village in his 50s, was shot dead on Sunday by junta ground troops.
Local resistance forces believed the troops were ensuring safe passage for a fleet of junta boats that would be traveling the Ayeyarwady River in the next few days. Thein Lin’s daughter was also shot by the soldiers, but survived.
“The infantry column seemed to be providing security for the boats,” said the spokesperson for a local resistance group, the Kaung Kin Revolution Force, which operates under the command of the publicly mandated, shadow National Unity Government.
“We still haven’t retrieved the body of the father but our medical team is taking care of the daughter and she’s no longer in critical condition,” he added.
According to the spokesperson, the military shot the victims on Sunday while they were working at a fishery outside the village, which is located a few miles east of the river.
On Tuesday morning at around 7am, a flotilla of nine junta vessels reportedly sailed out of Mandalay’s river port on the Ayeyarwady with fresh reinforcement troops and loads of supplies and weapons.
Three of the vessels were cargo boats carrying food, three were carrying arms, and the rest were there to provide security. They took the reinforcements and supplies aboard in Mandalay before heading north towards Bhamo, Kachin State.
Arriving in Madaya Township in the afternoon, the junta personnel on the boats started firing weapons from the river, injuring civilians in Sein Pan Kone village, located on the Ayeyarwady’s east bank. They wounded a 6-year-old boy on the arm and thigh and a 40-year-old woman on the leg.
“The child was hit in the elbow and thigh but we managed to take care of his injuries. A woman was also shot in the leg. We’re still trying to get her to a place where we can help her,” the resistance group spokesperson said.
Since the armed resistance against the coup regime has established strongholds in parts of Myanmar, junta forces have had to defend strategic supply routes–including roads and waterways–from attacks by resistance forces, and have sometimes retaliated against civilians.
The area where the villagers were shot has already been a target of junta attacks since Myanmar’s 2021 military coup. According to information maintained by the monitoring group Data for Myanmar, of approximately 70,000 civilian houses the Myanmar military has torched in arson attacks as of mid-June, more than 600 were in Madaya Township.
