Myanmar junta advances within three miles of Kyaukme

As junta ground forces continued to advance on Kyaukme, northern Shan State, the regime’s aircraft also carried out multiple bombing raids in the surrounding township over the weekend, local sources said. The Myanmar military has been conducting a counteroffensive to retake Kyaukme and neighbouring areas of northern Shan State lost to the ethnic armed group Ta’ang National Liberation Army and its allies between 2023 and 2025. Residents of Kyaukme Township said junta soldiers were approaching the village of Hko Mone some three miles south of Kyaukme after overrunning the TNLA’s position in the village of Sa Khan Thar on Friday. “Some senior TNLA officials pulled out of Kyaukme overnight on Sunday, but a lot of their fighters are still in the area,” a man from Kyaukme said. “The residents still in the town have fled their homes, leaving it mostly empty.” Clashes spread to Kyaukme Township in early August following the junta forces’ recapture of the town of Nawnghkio from the TNLA in mid-July. The junta has deployed two columns to advance on Kyaukme’s urban centre as well as push into villages west of the town and try to reestablish control over the route to Mogok, Mandalay Region, according to locals. “Clashes broke out near Nam Hsawt and Pin Tee villages,” a man from Kyaukme Township said, referring to villages on the road to Mogok. The military regime shelled and carried out airstrikes in Nam Hsawt and Long Wei villages over the weekend before its ground troops moved into the area, according to local sources. After arriving, junta troops set fires in Long Wei on Sunday, according to TNLA sources. The Ta’ang armed group also claimed the junta air force dropped two 500-pound bombs on the village of Pan Tha Pyay some 28 miles west of Kyaukme, damaging a monastery and around 20 houses on Saturday, and that the following day clashes broke out near the village of Seik Hpu, west of Kyaukme. The village of Pan Tha Pyay in Kyaukme Township after a junta airstrike on Saturday (Photo: TNLA) A junta drone strike also reportedly killed a man on Friday in the village of Par Poke southwest of Sa Khan Thar. After Chinese-brokered ceasefire talks collapsed between the TNLA and junta officials in late August, the junta resolved to retake Kyaukme and Hsipaw, both of which are located on a major trade route linking Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, with Muse, a commercial hub on the China-Myanmar border. The Ta’ang armed group’s leadership had rejected the regime officials’ demand that they return control of towns they had captured in and near northern Shan State, retaining control of only two in territory traditionally claimed by the Ta’ang ethnic community and designated as part of the Palaung Self-Administered Zone. The military regime plans to hold countrywide elections in December and January. Despite the TNLA’s continued control of Hsipaw and Kyaukme, the junta has announced that those townships are among the jurisdictions where elections will proceed as scheduled. Some 9,000 civilians displaced by recent fighting in Kyaukme Township are sheltering in villages controlled by the armed wing of the Shan State Progress Party in Kyaukme Township. They are likely to be impacted by severe food insecurity, on top of the risks already posed by the nearby fighting, if clashes continue in the area. “Junta troops have not yet entered the town,” said a displaced man from Kyaukme Township. “If fighting reaches the town, nearby shelters for displaced people could be hit by artillery and we may have to move again, depending on what happens.”

Myanmar junta advances within three miles of Kyaukme

The Myanmar military continued its counteroffensive to retake Kyaukme Township, a jurisdiction where the junta previously announced plans to hold elections in December despite an anti-junta armed group’s continued control and presence there

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