Myanmar military raids villages on Magway-Rakhine border after attack on junta base

Junta troops arrested more than a dozen villagers on Monday, a day after resistance forces destroyed a junta outpost in Ngape Township, Magway Region, according to local sources. At least 17 people from two villages, including five women, were detained in an apparent response to Sunday’s attack on the military’s hilltop outpost near Ngape Township’s Zin Pyun village, some 22 miles from Magway Region’s border with Rakhine State. “Four people including two women from Goke Wa village were released on bail yesterday,” a man from Zin Pyun village told Myanmar Now on Wednesday. “Two women from Yae Nwe village will be released on bail today.” The status of the other detainees, still in custody at a police station in Padan, Ngape Township, remains uncertain, according to locals. The Chin Defence Force of Asho (CDF-Asho) claimed responsibility for the attack on the junta hilltop outpost, which took place at around 1pm on Sunday. “We managed to destroy their base after the soldiers abandoned it during the fighting,” a representative of CDF-Asho said. CDF-Asho is a breakaway armed group that split from another anti-junta organisation, the Asho Chin Defence Force (ACDF), and has been operating in the township on the Ann-Padan road. After the resistance attack, two military vehicles departed from Pandan village, around eight miles northeast of Zin Pyun, and retook the junta hilltop post that resistance forces had seized earlier that day. The vehicles were carrying at least 100 junta troops who raided two villages Monday, according to CDF-Asho, arresting seven civilians including three women in the village of Goke Wa. Continuing the raids in Yae Nwe the next morning, the soldiers detained ten more villagers including two women, local sources said. Locals in and near Zin Pyun said that the sudden outbreak of fighting near their homes had left them feeling deeply shaken. It was the first time some had heard gunfire, and some fled their village for safety. “We heard an exchange of fire at around 1pm and it lasted around 10 minutes,” a man from Zin Pyun village said. No civilian casualties were reported during the fighting. There are at least seven junta outposts in Ngape Township on the Ann-Padan road, between junta-controlled Padan and Tone Gyi less than five miles away from the Magway-Rakhine border. The township is also home to several strategically important military sites, including two of the junta’s armaments factories and two artillery battalion bases, all of which are located near civilian-inhabited areas. Clashes have broken out regularly along the Ann-Padan road since early January as the military regime reinforced its defences to prevent a potential advance by the Arakan Army (AA), the armed group in control of most of neighbouring Rakhine State, and its allies. The junta has also deployed battalions under the command of Infantry Division (ID) 99 along the road to Ka Myin Kan village, located some 33 miles northeast of Ann, Rakhine State. The AA captured an ID 99 commander, along with other junta soldiers, as prisoners of war in February. Ann is the site of the regime’s Western Regional Military Command headquarters, which the AA captured in December 2024.

Myanmar military raids villages on Magway-Rakhine border after attack on junta base

Clashes have occurred regularly in Magway Region since the beginning of the year as junta forces deployed to the area to block a potential advance by the Arakan Army from Rakhine State

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