Myanmar junta forces kill three resistance fighters in raid on Sagaing Region village

Three members of a local resistance team were reportedly killed on Tuesday during an assault by army and militia forces on a rural village in Khin-U Township, Sagaing Region, resistance sources said. Early that morning, a column of soldiers and junta-trained Pyu Saw Htee militia members advanced towards a resistance outpost near the village of Ma Daung Gyi, some five miles east of the Mu River. “Three defence team members from Ma Daung Gyi village were stationed at the forest outpost,” a Khin-U Township resistance member said. “The junta forces had split into three columns, then approached undetected in the early morning, so no one saw them.” Local resistance members said they found the bodies of three comrades who had been on duty at the outpost, all resistance members in their 20s from Ma Daung Gyi village, on Tuesday evening. The junta troops and Pyu Saw Htee members who carried out the raid were based at a major, heavily fortified army and militia base camp in Ma Daung Hla village less than two miles to the northeast. The base in Ma Daung Hla came under attack by resistance forces twice in August, and the soldiers and militia members began retaliating with raids on surrounding villages in early September. 50 militia members, organised and led by the pro-military, ultranationalist monk Warthawa, later joined the column from Kanbalu Township to the north, bringing its total size to around 170 men. The column torched some 200 houses in at least ten villages in northern Khin-U Township including Ma Daung Gyi in the first week of September. Displaced residents from western Khin-U Township, seen in November 2022 (Photo: Myanmar Now) Following the raid on Ma Daung Gyi and killing of the three resistance team members on Tuesday, the column set fires in the villages of Si Poke, Gya Poet, and Pauk Thint Ton, destroying more than 150 homes, resistance sources said. The soldiers and militia members then withdrew to their base in Ma Daung Hla before advancing again into the villages of Pay Kone and Tha Yet Kan on Wednesday morning. “The column was divided into three parallel sub-units, each moving to the south,” a resistance member in Khin-U Township said. “They moved into the villages with a 500-metre separation between each unit, so that if one of the sub-units met with resistance, the others supported it.” The badly outnumbered resistance, unable to engage with all three units in direct combat, instead had to resort to setting landmines and explosives in their paths, he added. Information collected by the research group Data for Myanmar, which monitors arson attacks by the military and allied groups, indicates that over 4,800 houses were destroyed in fires started by junta forces between 2021 and 2024 in Khin-U Township. 72 percent of more than 100,000 civilian homes destroyed in junta arson attacks since the military coup of 2021 have been in Sagaing Region, according to Data for Myanmar. Khin-U Township is bordered by Shwebo to the south, Ye-U to the west, the Pyu Saw Htee militia-dominated Kanbalu Township to the north, and Mandalay Region across the Ayeyarwady River to the east. Due to the dominance of resistance forces over Khin-U Township’s rural areas, it has become a frequent target for raids by junta ground troops and junta-trained militias. Bordering Khin-U Township to the west across the Mu River, Depayin Township has also become a frequent target of junta arson attacks. Resistance forces briefly captured the Depayin in August, but regime forces retook the town the same day. Since then, they have been setting fires routinely in the town’s urban wards, according to a volunteer for the Depayin Township Brotherhood, a group assisting the displaced. Since the resumption of the sweeping, anti-junta Operation 1027 offensive in June of this year, clashes have also extended from nearby Mandalay Region. The army has escalated operations in neighbouring parts of Sagaing Region after resistance forces captured the towns of Singu and Thabeikkyin in July and August on the opposite bank of the Ayeyarwady in Mandalay Region. Map showing location of Khin-U Township

Myanmar junta forces kill three resistance fighters in raid on Sagaing Region village

While continuing offensive operations in resistance-dominated rural areas this week, army troops and junta-trained militias killed resistance fighters manning a village outpost near the Mu River in Khin-U Township

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