Residents of Karen State’s Kawkareik town flee fighting between military, KNLA

A series of clashes recently broke out between the military and resistance forces fighting under the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)—the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU)—in Karen State’s Kawkareik town, which has been all but abandoned by its civilian population. “Battles are breaking out on a daily basis inside Kawkareik,” a source within the KNU told Myanmar Now on Thursday. The anti-junta allied forces led by the KNLA had established posts around the town at the time of reporting, but the military’s Infantry Battalion 97 still remained at its base in Kawkareik and another area base, called Yay Ku Kan. The KNLA turned its focus to the junta presence in Kawkareik in early December, targeting bases including those along the strategic Asia Highway, which runs past Kawkareik to the Thai border. While most of Kawkareik’s population has fled to other parts of the township as well as to the neighbouring state capital of Hpa-an, some locals have returned to their homes only to retrieve supplies. According to a KNU statement issued on Wednesday, there were around 30,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kawkareik Township, and the ethnic armed organisation was providing them basic food assistance. One of the IDPs said that more aid was needed. “Despite the donations, it is still very hard because almost an entire town was displaced,” the individual said. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), there are 2.6 million IDPs throughout Myanmar, but Karen civil society organisations working with displaced populations on the ground have repeatedly said that the actual figures in their region are markedly higher than those estimated by the UN. A UNOCHA representative told Myanmar Now in October last year that they had “serious access challenges and funding shortfalls in Myanmar, including in the country’s Southeast,” which includes Karen State. Fires also burnt down homes in at least two of Kawkareik’s urban wards on Monday and Tuesday. “Since both sides [from the military junta and the KNLA] are present in these affected areas, it is hard to say whether the fire was caused by arson attacks or artillery shellings,” a man from the town said. Myanmar Now was unable to confirm the number of residences that had been destroyed, or the number of civilian casualties during the recent clashes.

Residents of Karen State’s Kawkareik town flee fighting between military, KNLA

The population of ‘almost an entire town’ is displaced by daily battles in Kawkareik, with tens of thousands of people in need of humanitarian assistance

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