Myanmar air force bombs monastery in Mutraw District after capture of Hpapun

Junta airstrikes on a monastery and other civilian targets killed at least six including a monk and injured at least 15 on Sunday in a Karen State town captured by anti-junta forces last month, aid workers and local sources said. The town—called Hpapun in Burmese—is within the administrative territory of Brigade 5 of the Karen National Union, which they call Mutraw District. According to the demarcation by a previous Myanmar government, which differs from the KNU’s structuring of its territory, Hpapun is the administrative centre of the township by the same name. The airstrikes hit a monastery housing some 200 displaced civilians, killing a monk, three other men, and two women, according to members of the Free Burma Rangers, an international aid and emergency rescue organisation. Still image from a video showing the bodies of civilians killed by a junta airstrike on a monastery (Photo: Free Burma Rangers) “People had fled there—about 200 of them—about 10 days ago,” said FBR director David Eubank, referring to the monastery. He added that the FBR had offered to provide medicine and help civilians seek shelter elsewhere due to the frequency of airstrikes on civilian targets, but that some civilians and at least one monk had refused the group’s help. “Yesterday, on Sunday, I’d just been by that monastery earlier in the day, and saw nothing untoward,” Eubank said. “Then I came back a second time, and there was debris everywhere. Jets had just flown over us. I was about three kilometres away and they bombed in the distance… It was the monastery.” A video clip recorded by a local civilian showed three bodies among the debris, and video footage recorded by the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) showed five of victims’ bodies covered by blankets. Other videos showed damaged houses in two of the town’s residential wards. The airstrikes, which may continue, are part of the military’s response to the capture of Hpapun on March 19 by the Karen National Liberation Army—the armed wing of the KNU—in an alliance with the People’s Defence Forces (PDF)—the armed wing of the publicly mandated, anti-junta National Unity Government. Two Hpapun residents—a four-year-old child and an adult woman—were killed by junta drone attacks on March 24. The FBR and anti-junta forces have been working to evacuate the town, moving the civilians trapped there to safer areas. The KNU has not reported the number of civilian casualties amid the fighting in Mutraw District, and Myanmar Now could not confirm the number of deaths that occurred in addition to those in the monastery. Junta troops are still operating in other parts of Mutraw District since the town’s capture on March 19, and KNLA-led fighters have continued to attack the junta troops still in the area, according to a KNU spokesperson. “Fighting has been ongoing as our battalions continue to attack the remaining junta bases there,” KNU spokesperson P’doh Saw Kler Say told Myanmar Now on Monday. On Sunday, the KNLA and its allies attacked and seized a major base belonging to the army’s Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 19 in Hpapun Township, as shown in a video posted by the news outlet KNU-Mutraw News and confirmed by the KNU spokesperson. More than 1,000 people have been displaced by junta bombing and shelling in the district, according to the same local outlet.

Myanmar air force bombs monastery in Mutraw District after capture of Hpapun

The junta air force is bombing civilian targets in Mutraw District—the territory under the administration of the Karen National Union’s Brigade 5—as Karen anti-junta forces and their allies continue fighting to push out the remaining junta forces

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