Two junta-appointed local administrators and a police officer were recently killed in Mandalay despite increased military presence throughout the city, with no organisations claiming responsibility for the murders.
On Monday, a 100-household head Thein Soe—also known as Hla Aung—was shot twice in the abdomen at 6am by a gunman on a motorbike. At the time of his death, he was selling fritters with his son in front of his house in Pyigyitagon Township’s Yebaw Kwat Thit ward, according to eyewitnesses.
“A man and a woman arrived on a motorcycle and it was the woman who shot the administrator,” a local told Myanmar Now.
The individual speculated that Thein Soe’s murder was related to his involvement in the junta’s forced eviction of alleged squatters, which involved the February demolition of more than 200 homes in the late administrator’s ward to make way for electricity lines.
Locals have argued that many of those whose homes were targeted were not informal settlers as the junta claimed, but the owners of the land plots on which they lived.
On Saturday, gunmen shot at junta soldiers overseeing the forced evictions in another part of Pyigyitagon, but no casualties were confirmed.
Resistance group Generation Z Power Mandalay later stated that they carried out the attack on the soldiers in order to prevent the destruction of local houses. Although one of their members was injured, they reportedly managed to escape arrest despite junta roadblocks set up in an attempt to locate them.
The military council claimed on Saturday evening that their troops had apprehended an assailant allegedly in possession of a grenade.
Two other attacks on junta targets were carried out on Saturday in Chanmyathazi and Patheingyi townships by unknown assailants, killing a ward administrator and a member of the police.
Aung Moe, the administrator for Chanmyathazi Township’s Tanpawadi ward, was shot dead while walking with his wife in public on Saturday evening, a local in the area said.
“I don’t know what kinds of injuries he sustained as I didn’t dare to go and check,” the local source told Myanmar Now.
He added that Aung Moe’s wife suffered a gunshot wound to her leg, and was taken to the hospital by a social welfare group.
Aung Moe reportedly survived another assassination attempt in May last year in which he was stabbed, but continued to hold his administrative position in Tanpawadi.
Police private Yazar Thein was found dead with bullet wounds near a ditch in Patheingyi Township. He was returning home by motorcycle from Mandalay’s electricity office, another local told Myanmar Now.
Myanmar Now tried to contact the police stations in Chanmyathazi, Patheingyi and Pyigyitagon for further information on the recent murders, but the calls went unanswered.
