Around 80 junta soldiers detained locals and searched homes in a village where a police outpost in Mandalay’s Madaya Township was attacked by the resistance, locals said.
A group of local anti-junta fighters known as Pa Kha Pha torched the main building in the Yonepin village police outpost on Sunday. Pa Ka Pha groups have emerged around Myanmar in response to violent crackdowns on anti-coup protests in the wake of the military takeover in February.
The next day, soldiers cracked down on the community.
“Shortly after the soldiers arrived at the scene, they arrested around 20 people and took them with them. They said they needed them to guide them around the area but I’m sure they were going to use them as human shields, since local defence forces typically attack them with explosives,” said a local man from a village near Yonepin.
At the time of reporting, Myanmar Now was unable to confirm the exact number of locals arrested.
The troops broke into three columns and carried out “aggressive” searches of residences in Yonepin, locals said.
A man from Madaya said that the police outpost in question was normally manned by around 15 troops, but on the night of the Pa Ka Pha attack, there were only five troops there.
“Some of the police ran away in plainclothes, since the attack took place at night,” he said. “The local defence force did not try to capture them because they thought they were just regular villagers. They didn’t know that those people running away were plainclothes police officers.”
Families of the police officers, including their wives and children, stayed behind after the police ran, according to the local, who said that the resistance fighters moved the relatives out of the outpost’s main building before torching it. They were later released.
Resistance forces around Madaya Township have been ambushing the military’s columns and convoys as they travel on foot, using guerrilla tactics. The military has been raiding villages and killing locals.
A total of four Madaya locals have died while being tortured at junta interrogation centres in recent months.
On December 12 and November 12 respectively, two Madaya men died within 24 of their arrest: Than Myint, a 57-year-old secretary of a social welfare group and 33-year-old Ye Aung, detained in the place of his nephew, who was wanted by the coup regime.
In late November, Ye Thu Naing, a 31-year-old government worker who had joined the Civil Disobedience Movement and a local member of the People’s Defence Force was also arrested and later found dead, shot in the head. Thein Zaw, a 35-year-old teacher, was arrested on October 6. He died in junta custody in Madaya within days of his arrest.
