Myanmar air force bombs villages as AA, allies continue pressing into Ayeyarwady Region

The Myanmar military regime carried out aerial assaults on resistance targets in Ayeyarwady Region’s Lemyethna Township on Thursday as fighting spilled over Rakhine State’s border with Ayeyarwady Region, local sources said.A junta warplane dropped two bombs near Tone Taw village in western Lemyethna Township at around 11am, an eyewitness from Lemyethna Township told Myanmar Now the same day.“It just happened a little while ago. An aircraft dropped two bombs on the hill, southeast of our village,” said a man from the neighbouring village of San Kone. “Those on the ground also shot at the aircraft when it came back to drop another round.” Local sources claimed junta troops had been taking up positions in Tone Taw, less than two miles west of the Pathein-Monywa highway, preparing for the advancing anti-junta forces led by the Arakan Army (AA). Clashes between military and anti-junta forces had broken out less than a mile outside of Tone Taw village late on Wednesday afternoon, local sources said. “We heard gunfire starting around 4pm and it stopped at around 7pm. We also heard three rounds of drone strikes before 9pm last night,” a man from Lemyethna Township said on Thursday.No civilian casualties have been reported from the bombing raids yet.However, the fighting has reportedly displaced civilians from dozens of villages near the Pathein-Monywa highway in Lemyethna Township over only two days. “We couldn’t bring our belongings except some food and necessities. We also left behind our cattle in the village,” a displaced San Kone resident said. “Only a few people have stayed behind to look after their houses.”In January, AA-led forces captured two junta outposts in the Rakhine Hills, also known as the Arakan Yoma, near the border between Ayeyarwady Region and Rakhine State. The AA-led anti-junta forces’ advances in Ayeyarwady Region’s Thabaung, Yegyi and Lemyethna townships follows their capture of two coastal villages—Ma Gyi Zin and Baw Mi—in Pathein Township south of the AA-controlled town of Gwa, Rakhine State in January.The AA has held Gwa, the administrative centre of Rakhine State’s southernmost township, since seizing it in December. “There are three offensive columns advancing in Ayeyarwady Region,” a resistance fighter from Ayeyarwady Region said. “One column is moving towards Thabaung, another one is pushing from Ngathaingchaung into Yegyi, and the third is advancing into Lemyethna.”Since February, anti-regime forces have been concentrating their attacks on the Light Infantry Battalion 308 base on the Gwa-Ngathaingchaung road—a gateway to Ayeyarwady Region—as well as the junta’s Artillery Battalion 344 base in Thabaung Township.

Myanmar air force bombs villages as AA, allies continue pressing into Ayeyarwady Region

The air force’s bombing was a response to an advance by the Arakan Army and allied anti-junta fighters into northern Ayeyarwady Region from neighbouring Rakhine State

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