Mother, two daughters killed in Sagaing Region by Myanmar junta drone strikes

Drone attacks by the Myanmar military killed a 30-year-old woman and her two children in Kanbalu Township, Sagaing Region on Saturday, according to local resistance members. The drones had been launched by soldiers and junta-trained Pyu Saw Htee militias based in the village of Ngar Toet three miles southeast of Kanbalu, according to a spokesperson for the township’s defence team. “They initiated three strikes from Ngar Toet village, targeting areas within the drones’ range. They began firing from a spot near the upper part of the village,” he said. The drones fired six shells into the village of Inn Lel Gyi five miles southeast of Ngar Toet, killing a villager named Phyu Win, 30, and her daughters Theint Theint Phyu, 4, and Nyein Ei San, 10. The junta’s attack also injured nine villagers in Inn Lel Gyi, one of whom is now in critical condition, according to the Kyunhla-Kanbalu Activists Group, an organisation reporting on armed clashes in the township. The group also reported that the drone strikes destroyed two houses and killed six cows belonging to residents of the village. The military carried out the strikes in an area where there had been no recent fighting with anti-junta forces, Kanbalu Township-based resistance members told Myanmar Now. On the day the drone strikes occurred, a pro-junta propaganda channel on social media posted claims that the attack’s intended targets were members of the People’s Defence Force—the armed wing of the publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG)—staying in Inn Lel Gyi. The propaganda channel’s posts said Hla Htun, the NUG-appointed village administrator, as well as four PDF members had incurred severe injuries in the attack. The Myanmar military has acquired a supply of ‘quadcopter’ drones capable of firing 60mm shells, according to the Kanbalu Township resistance spokesperson, which they have already used to target areas mostly inhabited by civilians. “Drone attacks on civilian villages were previously unheard of,” he said. “They mainly focused on where our resistance forces were. Recently, though, there have been attacks on civilian targets. Residents in villages near the junta base are being forced to flee to the forest for safety.” On September 27, junta troops stationed in Sa Bai Nant Thar village, around 13 miles east of Kanbalu, used a drone to fire three shells into the village of Yae Shin Gyi some 18 miles to the south, according to the Kyunhla-Kanbalu Activist Group. A traveller staying in Yae Shin Gyi was killed in the attack, and four men and three women residing in the village were injured, the organisation reported, adding that on the same day, the same Sa Bai Nant Thar-based troops junta used a drone to shell another village near Kanbalu, Aung Taing Lel, killing a woman in her 50s. The following day, the troops carried out a third drone strike in the village of Hman Ni Pin some four miles northeast of their base, killing a five-year-old girl and three women between 25 and 50 years old, the organisation said.

Mother, two daughters killed in Sagaing Region by Myanmar junta drone strikes

While the military has previously relied mostly on airstrikes and artillery, junta troops have launched a series of unprecedented drone attacks on villages in Kanbalu Township in recent weeks, killing civilians

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