Civilians continued to come under attack across a wide swathe of Sagaing Region on Tuesday, as regime forces stepped up their efforts to eradicate groups opposed to Myanmar’s military junta.
In western Wetlet Township, some 60km northwest of Mandalay, a woman was killed by an artillery shell fired by junta troops as they entered the village of U Yin Thar, according to resistance sources.
The woman, identified as 30-year-old Mone, was disabled and thus unable to flee as the troops fired on the village ahead of their arrival, Kyin Ko, the leader of Battalion 1 of the Wetlet People’s Defence Force (PDF), told Myanmar Now.
While an alliance of resistance forces attempted to prevent the column of around 80 soldiers from attacking the village, they were constrained by the fact that the troops were holding six civilians from the neighbouring village of Ti Taw hostage, Kyin Ko said.
“They were using them as human shields, so we had to hold back on our attacks in order to avoid harming the civilians,” he said.
However, the two sides did clash for about two hours, he added. Two members of the Shwebo PDF were killed in the fighting, but no further details were provided.
A member of U Yin Thar’s village defence force said that the junta troops fired relentlessly during their assault on the village.
“They fired on the village with heavy artillery from one position, and with machine guns from another. The villagers had nowhere to run, and we didn’t get many chances to fight back,” he said.
The troops left early the next day, but not before torching eight houses and killing several farm animals, a resident said.
According to Kyin Ko, the fate of the six Ti Taw villagers was still unknown.
“There have been rumours that they were killed, but we haven’t found their bodies, so it’s possible they were taken somewhere else,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Kalay Township, some 200km northwest of Wetlet, a military column of around 200 soldiers fired five artillery shells at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the village of Nat Myaung on Tuesday, seriously injuring seven people, including one child.
The camp, which is located inside a local monastery, houses around 1,000 people from the neighbouring villages of Nat Myaung and Nat Chaung, as well as several other villages in the area that have come under attack from regime forces.
A man who was at the camp when the incident occurred said that the sound of gunfire could be heard before the shelling began.
“People started coming out into the open after the shooting stopped, but then about 15 minutes later, the artillery shells landed,” he said.
The man said he also saw the child who was injured in the attack.
“He was covered in blood and was also spitting up blood,” he said, adding that he had injuries to his neck, arm and chest.
The child was taken to the town of Kalay, about 20km north of the village, for treatment, but it was not known at the time of reporting if he survived his injuries.
This was the second time that the Nat Myaung IDP camp had come under attack from junta troops. On March 6, several shells landed on the monastery where the camp is located, injuring 10 people, including three children.
The military column that carried out the attack on the camp in Nat Myaung later moved to Nat Chaung, about 3km away, where it was stationed at a local monastery and high school.
On Wednesday, allied resistance forces attacked the junta troops as they were setting fire to houses in the village.
“The battle is still ongoing. We lost one of our men this morning. The military’s forces are now burning down even more houses,” a member of the Kalay PDF told Myanmar Now at around 5pm on Wednesday.
Nat Chaung is a village of more than 1,000 households located on the Kale-Gangaw road. According to residents, it has lost around 250 houses to arson attacks carried out during four raids by regime forces.
Three military columns have been terrorising villages in southern Kalay Township since May 28, resulting in a number of serious battles in the area, according to residents and resistance forces.
The Kalay PDF claims that over 70% of the more than 100 villages in the township are under the control of anti-regime forces
![Resistance fighters holding heavy weapons ammunition in central Myanmar. (Photo: Freedom Revolution Force [FRF])](https://myanmar-now.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/04/438869056_443267851680128_1706386881626943924_n-390x220.jpeg)
