Myanmar junta recaptures key route into Mandalay

The Myanmar military has fully retaken control of the Mandalay-Thabeikkyin-Mogok road, a critical corridor into Mandalay that anti-regime forces previously planned to use to advance toward the city, according to resistance and local sources. Junta forces already held the cities of Mandalay and Mogok—a strategically important gateway into northern Shan State—at the beginning of 2026, along with towns and villages on the road between them including Madaya, Singu, and Thabeikkyin. “The resistance has withdrawn from these areas, and the junta now holds the towns, villages, and roads along this corridor,” a Singu-based source in the armed resistance told Myanmar Now in early January. The military regime claimed in a statement on January 14 that its troops had retaken the villages of Nyaung Pin Thar, Poe Za Nwe, and Kyauk Hle Bee, as well as their previously captured battalion bases nearby. As the junta secured Madaya, Singu, and Thabeikkyin to the north of Mandalay City, along with Patheingyi and Mogok to the east and northeast, the resistance forces’ approach from every direction is now practically cut off. Despite the junta’s promises to reopen the Mandalay-Mogok road for civilians, it remains closed as of the third week of January and residents say they have been travelling into Mandalay via the Kyaukme-Pyin Oo Lwin route instead. “We still can’t use the road. There are no clashes here, but the junta has been conducting clearance operations,” a woman in Singu said. Currently, residents from Singu, Madaya, and Thabeikkyin sheltering in Mandalay City can return home only with a junta-issued recommendation letter, according to the Singu resident. “People from Singu and Thabeikkyin get permits to enter the area at Let Pan Hla village, but drivers first have to secure recommendation letters from Mandalay. They are not allowed to return via Madaya Road,” she said. The junta forces, which have been fighting to retake the road gradually since 2024, now have virtually complete control after taking Singu in December. This photo taken on July 5, 2024 shows Mandalay Hill in Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar. (Photo by Sai Aung MAIN / AFP) Local resistance sources told Myanmar Now last month that they were forced to retreat from their positions on the road as the junta attacked using masses of infantry troops as well as artillery, airstrikes, and high-tech drones. The loss of vital links to Sagaing Region and northern Shan State from Mandalay was a significant blow to the anti-junta resistance, according to a resistance source. “This is a huge loss. Our being pushed out of upper Mandalay means the junta will now be able to concentrate more forces on Sagaing and Magway,” the source said, referring to other fronts in Myanmar’s civil war. “The plan was originally to surround Mandalay from the west, south, and north, but they’ve had to yield to the junta in the east and north,” the source continued. “The main issue was poor coordination between PDF battalions and People’s Defence Team forces, yet we must learn from this and keep going.” Another fighter based in Mogok confirmed resistance forces are now at a much greater disadvantage. “Now that the routes are open to the junta, the resistance is struggling and will have to make a much greater effort to recapture the towns,” he said. Having retaken most of the territory north of Mandalay from the armed resistance, junta forces are now using bulldozers and explosives to destroy bunkers and shelters in the village of Chaung Gyi, Singu Township, according to junta propaganda channels on social media. The shelters were previously used by the Mandalay Region People’s Defence Forces (MDY-PDF), the strongest resistance group in the region, and its allies. MDY-PDF members in Mandalay Region in September 2024 (Photo: Moe Oo / Myanmar Now) After clashes broke out between the military and MDY-PDF in mid-2023 in Madaya Township, some 20 miles north of Mandalay, sources within the MDY-PDF told Myanmar Now that their goal was to penetrate the central city. Around a year later, during the yearslong Operation 1027, the MDY-PDF coordinated with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), capture swathes of territory in Mandalay Region north of the city while the TNLA took over towns and bases in neighbouring northern Shan State. Forces hostile to the regime closed in on Mandalay and the hill city of Pyin Oo Lwin, the site of Myanmar’s premier officer training academies, ultimately approaching within 20 miles of the two military strongholds. At its height in 2024 and 2025, Operation 1027 brought most of northern Shan State—excluding only Muse, Mongyai, and Tangyan townships—under the control of the TNLA and its ally, the Kokang army. This drew more regime forces to the Shan State front, giving resistance forces in Mandalay and Sagaing regions the opportunity to capture more territory from the junta in those areas, with the MDY-PDF even announcing its goal to “return to our homeland” by recapturing Mandalay in a public statement in August 2024. However, resistance forces in central Myanmar have since lost these hard-won gains and been forced to abandon these plans, with junta forces—their ranks swollen by fresh conscripts—retaking captured towns one by one in northern Shan State and Mandalay Region in a 2025 counteroffensive. With the army advancing towards their last remaining positions on the Mandalay–Mogok road, the MDY-PDF issued a general apology on January 3 for its inability to fend off the military’s advance. Myanmar Now has sent queries to MDY-PDF spokesperson Osmond about the details of further tactical developments since then but has not received a response. Clashes are ongoing in Mandalay Region against the backdrop of the junta-controlled general elections, which were scheduled to proceed in three phases on December 28, January 11, and January 25. While Singu Township is still too unstable to allow for voting, the military regime plans to hold elections in Thabeikkyin Township during the third and final phase this coming Sunday. The tightly controlled voting process, which has so far delivered decisive victories to the military’s proxy party and its allies throughout the country, the expected outcome after the Myanmar junta deliberately excluded or encumbered participation by opposition parties. However, even amid the elections, clashes have not ceased in Mandalay Region and adjacent areas. Artillery in Singu and Madaya townships fired shells across the river into Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region last Thursday, killing three villagers.Ten days earlier, a fighter jet bombed a village school in Sagaing Region’s Khin-U Township, where people displaced from their homes by fighting in Madaya Township had been sheltering. The attack killed three people and injured five, including a seven-year-old. A series of airstrikes in Sagaing Region has made life especially difficult for the thousands of displaced people from Mandalay Region sheltering there, forcing them to live in fear in addition to enduring already-meagre conditions. Ko Htun, a displaced resident of Madaya, sitting beside the bodies of his father-in-law, brother-in-law, and wife, killed in an airstrike on Kone Gyi village in Sagaing Region’s Khin-U Township (Photo: Moe Oo / Myanmar Now) The junta has carried out at least 16 airstrikes in Wetlet Township since the beginning of December, injuring dozens and killing 30 people including monks, children, and elderly civilians. In a statement on their recapture of Singu, the military regime said in a December 19 statement that the army was in pursuit of retreating resistance forces that had withdrawn from Mandalay Region across the Ayeyarwady into Sagaing Region. Photos accompanying the statement showed destroyed vehicles and river jetties on the river’s west bank.

Myanmar junta recaptures key route into Mandalay

Losing ground daily to junta forces, the beleaguered armed resistance has now lost most means of access to Mandalay

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