Twelve homes were burnt down this weekend in a village near the site of a recent assault by resistance forces on a Myanmar army convoy travelling through Sagaing Region’s Htigyaing Township.
For the first three days of March, the Htigyaing chapter of the People’s Defence Force (PDF) repeatedly attacked the military vehicles along the Htigyaing-Indaw road, according to Daung Ni, a member of the anti-junta resistance group.
He said that the soldiers retaliated on Sunday morning by raiding the 200-household village of Thakhut Chaung, located on the road in question, one mile north of Htigyaing town.
“They broke into houses and torched the sacks of rice and bottles of oil first,” Daung Ni told Myanmar Now.
“They torched three houses first and then torched an entire row of houses,” he said, referring to the 12 homes along the edge of Thakhut Chaung.
No civilians were captured by the junta during the attack. Many residents, including the owners of the homes in question, had fled the village by the time the troops arrived after reportedly being tipped off by another local.
The Htigyaing PDF had identified which villagers’ homes had been destroyed, Daung Ni noted.
He said that area has been a stronghold for local defence forces, which have tried to slow the soldiers’ advance using guerrilla tactics, but have been unable to sustain major battles.
“[The military] gets attacked by resistance forces all the time near that area,” he explained. “We have very few weapons here. We only have explosive devices. We always have to run after attacking them with explosives as we can’t engage in combat.”
Myanmar Now was unable to reach junta officials for comment on the burning of homes in Thakhut Chaung.
Data for Myanmar, which is monitoring abuses perpetrated in the country, reported that as of early March, more than 6,150 homes had been burnt down by the junta since the military coup in February last year.
The Myanmar army’s practice of razing of homes and villages, particularly in ethnic states, has been well documented during the more than seven decades of civil war prior to the coup.
The military has denied responsibility for such actions, and has blamed resistance forces for any violence or destruction of property.
Army assaults on Htigyaing intensified in mid-January, with frequent battles breaking out with the local guerrilla forces active in the region.
After a military airstrike and subsequent clash in the village of Marathein on January 13, five members of the Htigyaing PDF were taken captive by the junta’s troops, forced to act as human shields, and then found killed days later.
The military council released a statement claiming that they attacked the village because the PDF had set up a base in a local school; it did not mention the deaths of the PDF members, or the junta’s use of air power in the assault on Marathein.
While the junta stated that the resistance force had destroyed the school, members of the PDF said that it was the Myanmar army troops who had burnt it down.
