Myanmar junta airstrike on Sagaing Region monastery kills 17 civilians

A nighttime bombing raid by the Myanmar junta’s air force killed 17 civilians including a 5-year-old child and a Buddhist monk in Indaw Township, Sagaing Region on Saturday, resistance and local sources said. Fighters from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Kachin People's Defense Force (Kachin PDF) said that around 9pm on the evening the airstrike occurred, they had carried out a joint attack on an army base in the township’s Nant Thar village, located some seven miles northwest of Indaw. The junta forces had rounded up around 40 local civilians and locked them in the Nant Thar village monastery before junta warplanes bombed the monastery at around midnight, according to the resistance fighters. The civilians killed in the airstrike included a 5-year-old boy and his mother, a Buddhist monk in his 40s, and 14 other adults between 30 and 80 years old, all of whom were identified by resistance groups. It is unconfirmed whether any junta soldiers were injured or killed. An officer of the Indaw Revolution (IR) armed group said the junta air force may have confused a monastery on high ground occupied by resistance forces with another monastery down the hillside where junta forces were stationed, guarding the villagers. "When the fighting started, the army summoned a few villagers and locked them in the monastery where the soldiers had stationed. At midnight, a jet fighter dropped two bombs on that monastery,” he said. Some of those injured in the airstrike died from blood loss because they were unable to get medical help in time, the IR officer said. “Villagers died because they couldn’t get treated. The army may have provided some first aid, but I don’t think they were prepared to help so many people at once,” he said. An Indaw Township resident said on Tuesday that local civilians had been working with the junta’s soldiers to arrange burials for the deceased civilians near the village. “They still haven’t released the remaining captive villagers,” he added. “So far, the army has only allowed the deceased people to be buried. The burials will take place this afternoon.” Nant Thar is a large village of about 200 homes, and had a population of around 5,000 before March 2023, when junta troops entered the village and set up a base there, prompting most of the inhabitants to flee. The civilians killed in the recent airstrike were among the minority of residents who remained in Nant Thar after the junta stationed in the village, by some accounts numbering only a few dozen. Following the airstrike, clashes continued in the village through Sunday morning, but had stopped by the next day, villagers said. Indaw Township, located on Sagaing Region’s border with Kachin State, stands out as a stronghold of the armed resistance against Myanmar’s military regime, with a heavy presence of armed resistance groups supported by KIA fighters. Indaw Township is located west of Katha; north of Tigyaing, a town that has long been a focal point of intense clashes between junta and resistance forces; south of Maw Luu, Indaw Township, a town taken over by resistance forces last year.

Myanmar junta airstrike on Sagaing Region monastery kills 17 civilians

A 5-year-old and a Buddhist monk were among the civilians killed in the aerial bombing of a village monastery in Indaw Township, where junta soldiers were guarding them

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