Myanmar regime’s airstrikes kill 19 in Mogok, Thabeikkyin

At least 19 were killed and 31 injured on Saturday in junta bombing raids targeting areas of Mandalay Region controlled by anti-junta forces, according to locals. Fighter jets bombed Chaung Gyi village in Thabeikkyin Township and Kyat Pyin village tract on the west side of the ruby-mining hub of Mogok around 8am that day, hitting a clothing shop and cold drink shop near the Kyat Pyin police station. With many locals out for breakfast during morning market hours, the resulting casualties were high. “That area has breakfast shops, so it’s a crowded time and place,” a ward resident said. Locals counted 12 dead after the incident, including a monk, a child, and 10 adult men, with 14 more injured, as cited in a Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) statement issued the same day. The TNLA—a Ta’ang or Palaung ethnic armed organisation—has held control of Mogok for more than a year since capturing the town during the broad Operation 1027 offensive against the military by the Brotherhood Alliance, which included the TNLA and two allied groups. The airstrike also reportedly destroyed four houses as well as several tractor-trailers parked in the area, according to a man living nearby. Kyat Pyin village tract reportedly houses many anti-junta fighters. While combatants were probably the junta air force’s primary targets, the indiscriminate aerial attack also harmed civilians, one of the anti-junta fighters noted. Two children were among the nine civilians killed in Mogok by a series of junta airstrikes in July, which also injured 43 people including four minors and destroyed 38 houses, according to the TNLA. Houses damaged by a junta airstrike in Kyat Pyin village tract, Mogok town. (Photo: Supplied) Minutes before attacking Mogok, junta aircraft also bombed Chaung Gyi village Thabeikkyin Township twice, causing additional casualties. The airstrike, which hit the south side of the village near the Mandalay-Mogok road between 7 and 8am, killed one woman and six men as well as injuring 17, according to armed resistance forces based in the township. The resistance forces—part of the People’s Defence Forces commanded by the publicly mandated National Unity Government—were the primary targets of the strike on the village, which had experienced similar aerial assaults before, according to residents. One such attack, which occurred during this year’s Thingyan water festival marking the Buddhist New Year in April, injured eight civilians and killed two. As rescue operations were underway in the village in response to the first strike on Saturday, the junta aircraft returned and bombed a second time around 11am. “They bombed the same place they hit in the morning. So a lot of people were killed and injured,” a resistance fighter said. Chaung Gyi is less than 10 miles south of the town of Thabeikkyin, which junta forces recently recaptured from the armed resistance. Clashes are ongoing in the township outside of the town centre. The village, made up of more than a thousand households largely dependent on the nearby gold mine for their livelihoods, is a stronghold of the resistance and an area where opposition to military rule is strong. Its population overwhelmingly supported the pre-coup civilian government led by the National League for Democracy party. Saturday’s airstrike came after the junta declared the disputed Mandalay Region townships of Mogok, Singu, and Ngazun to be under their administrative control. A person killed by the junta airstrike on Chaung Gyi village, Thabeikkyin Township on August 2 (Photo: AFP)

Myanmar regime’s airstrikes kill 19 in Mogok, Thabeikkyin

The junta air force targeted two village tracts still held by anti-regime forces in Mandalay Region

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