Myanmar military launches lethal airstrike on Chin State hospital

Four people were killed and 15 injured in a junta airstrike on a hospital 20 miles north of the town of Mindat in southern Chin State on Thursday evening. According to a statement by the anti-junta Chinland Defence Force (CDF), military aircraft bombed the Wammathu village site twice at around 8pm, destroying the facility in the fire that ensued. The casualties were patients at the hospital. “The air force dropped a series of bombs right on the building with the patients,” CDF spokesperson Salai Har Aum said. “Everyone was running around the ruins of the hospital in blood and sweat, wailing. It was a hellscape. It was like the sky fell.” The hospital was staffed by employees who had left their government health services posts as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) that followed Myanmar’s 2021 coup. It was known as one of the few facilities in the region that had the equipment and capacity to carry out complicated procedures. “With the arrival of CDM doctors from Mandalay, we had already upgraded the hospital to the point that we could do major stomach, bone, lung, and intestinal surgeries, save for brain surgeries,” said Salai Yaw Man, the spokesperson for the Mindat Township People’s Administration Team, a local administrative group formed by residents after the coup. The inside of the Wammathu village hospital, seen in 2022 (Supplied) On Friday, junta aircraft were still seen hovering over Mindat as hospital staff cared for the survivors of the airstrike. Salai Har Aum said that his organisation would carry out “very serious retaliations” for the attack. The military also raided the Wammathu hospital in February 2022. The CDF’s Mindat chapter commemorated its third anniversary in recent days, having formed in late April 2021, just over two months after the country’s military coup. After starting their revolt with handmade muskets, allied resistance forces have since managed to seize around 80 percent of the township from the junta. During this time, at least 20 people in Mindat have been killed in military artillery and aerial attacks, and 56 injured. More than 200 houses, religious buildings, and clinics have also been destroyed, according to the CDF.

Myanmar military launches lethal airstrike on Chin State hospital

‘It was a hellscape,’ says an eyewitness from a Mindat-based resistance group, describing the aerial bombing that killed four patients and injured 15 more

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