Myanmar junta’s shelling, airstrikes cause mass displacement in northern Shan State

Fearing the Myanmar military’s shelling and airstrikes, tens of thousands have fled their homes in northern Shan State since a powerful armed group relaunched an offensive against regime forces in late June. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA)—a member of the tripartite Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed organisations— announced on June 25 that a ceasefire with the military regime had ended after remaining in force for five months. Since hostilities resumed, the group and its resistance allies have taken control of two towns and claims to have overrun dozens of army bases in northern Shan State and adjacent areas of Mandalay Region. Clashes spread to Hsipaw Township With junta troops blocking roads and preventing civilians from leaving the area, thousands of the displaced northern Shan State residents are now reportedly trapped in Hsipaw, 22 miles east of Kyaukme, a town recently taken over by the TNLA and its allies. “They only allow gravely sick patients, monks, and nuns to cross the bridge,” a civilian woman said. The Hsipaw Bridge to which she referred is on a strategically important route connecting Mandalay Region with the northern Shan State capital, Lashio, and Muse, a trade hub on Shan State’s border with China. Hsipaw Township is situated less than 50 miles from Lashio and two other townships—Namtu and Namhsan—captured by the TNLA during a previous campaign of attacks on regime forces by the Brotherhood Alliance—dubbed Operation 1027—which lasted from October 2023 to January 2024. Local sources said more than 1,000 people from nearly a dozen villages outside Hsipaw have fled to religious buildings in the town seeking safety from the junta’s shelling. “A lot of the rural population fled into the urban centre out of fear of potential artillery strikes. Some villages were completely deserted,” a Hsipaw resident said. Residents of wards close to junta outposts have also moved to what they believed to be safer areas in Hsipaw, according to local sources. “Junta troops have been repeatedly firing heavy artillery from their bases. Residents completely evacuated five wards near the bases, fleeing to the monasteries,” a woman from Hsipaw said. Junta shells injured at least five people on Monday when they hit civilian homes in Sam Hpeik village, less than a mile west of Hsipaw, locals said. According to a social welfare volunteer assisting displaced people in Hsipaw, the people sheltering at a church and at least six monasteries in the town are struggling to get enough to eat. “The displaced people are short on food and money. The monasteries could only give them lodging but couldn’t provide food, so they had to see to it on their own,” a Hsipaw volunteer said. Food prices have skyrocketed in Hsipaw because of roadblocks, volunteers and locals said, and residents’ concerns about food and medicine are growing. “We have to pay 600 kyat (US $0.18) for one egg. The prices of rice and other goods are higher than we could ever have imagined,” a resident said. Hsipaw Township had a population of nearly 200,000 with around 12 percent living in urban areas in 2014, according to data from the census taken in Myanmar that year. Fighting rages on in Kyaukme Junta forces have also continued bombarding urban areas of Kyaukme Township from battalion bases outside of town. The shelling, along with airstrikes, have forced more than half the population to flee their homes since last week, according to local social welfare volunteers assisting the displaced. Civilians with the means to relocate from these areas have fled to monasteries in neighbouring rural villages, to southern Shan State, or to Mandalay Region. “People are still leaving the town,” a social welfare volunteer from Kyaukme told Myanmar Now on Tuesday. “We evacuated at least 500 novice monks from a few monasteries this morning.” More than 15,000 people displaced from their homes in Kyaukme are also in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, Kyaukme volunteers said. “At least 27 monasteries have become temporary shelters for displaced people in our township. We will distribute food supplies to each monastery as best we can,” said a representative of a social welfare group based in the township. In the most recent artillery bombardment, three residents of Ward 8 in Kyaukme died from shrapnel injuries on Monday, locals said. Some 20 houses including a private hotel in Kyaukme’s town centre were destroyed or damaged in junta airstrikes on Sunday. Civilians have also fled their homes in Nawnghkio some 32 miles southwest of Kyaukme since June 26, fearing retaliation by the junta after the TNLA overran most of the junta’s bases in the town. “The town has been damaged by junta bombardments and largely deserted,” said a displaced Nawnghkio resident who is now staying in Mandalay Region. According to the TNLA’s press team, 25 people have been killed and 37 injured by regime forces’ aerial attacks and shelling in northern Shan State and the neighbouring parts of Mandalay Region since hostilities with regime forces resumed.

Myanmar junta’s shelling, airstrikes cause mass displacement in northern Shan State

The military has compelled the evacuation of entire wards and villages in some northern Shan State townships in its effort to beat back a TNLA-led offensive with bombs and artillery

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