Myanmar military’s shelling injures civilians, kills two children near Shan-Karenni border

Junta artillery killed two children as well as injuring an infant and an adult on Thursday in Loikaw Township, Karenni (Kayah) State, after a resistance attack on a hilltop army base in neighbouring southern Shan State, locals and advocates said. Two girls around 12 years of age died in the shelling of Aing Sant village less than five miles west of the junta-controlled town of Loilen Lay that day, according to residents and a representative of the Karenni Human Rights Group (KnHRG). “The deceased were children. Both were 12-year-old girls. A five-month-old infant also sustained an injury to the hand,” said Benya Khung Aung, a KnHRG spokesperson. Photos supplied by the group showed that a shell had badly mangled the infant’s lower arm and hand. A woman in her 30s was also wounded in the chest, according to the KnHRG. Villagers said the junta’s Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 530, which has a base near Loilen Lay, was responsible for the artillery fire. The local media outlet Kantarawaddy Times reported that the shelling occurred the same day that resistance forces launched assaults on a hilltop outpost manned by junta troops and members of the junta-allied Pa-O National Army (PNA) in Hsihseng Township, southern Shan State some 10 miles north of Loilen Lay. A drone assault by junta troops had recently damaged two houses and a vehicle in a rural village of Hsihseng Township on Monday, according to Pa-O National Liberation Army (PNLA). The PNLA, an ethnic armed organisation that has renounced its previous agreement to a ceasefire with the military, is not to be confused with the PNA, the armed wing of the Pa-O National Organisation that has sometimes fought against anti-junta forces alongside the Myanmar military since the 2021 coup. At least three people and a 10-year-old girl were killed in Loikaw Township last November due to shelling from the same LIB 530 base near Loilen Lay in Loikaw Township, local sources claimed. The regime also carried out airstrikes and drone assaults on civilian targets in December of last year in Loikaw and Pekon townships on the Karenni-Shan border, killing at least seven people. Anti-regime forces said intermittent clashes have occurred along a route in southern Shan State between the junta-controlled town of Pekon and Moebye, a large village tract held by resistance forces near the Karenni State border. “Skirmishes occur sporadically around the areas near Moebye and Loikaw,” a spokesperson for the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force said. “The military maintains battalion bases in these townships but there are no longer other junta outposts in these areas.” In addition to deploying artillery and airstrikes, the military has also escalated its use of drones in resistance-held areas, according to the Karenni resistance forces.

Myanmar military’s shelling injures civilians, kills two children near Shan-Karenni border

The shelling, which targeted a village in Loikaw Township, Karenni (Kayah) State, followed an assault by anti-regime forces on an army hilltop base some ten miles to the north in southern Shan State

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