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Resistance forces strike junta police station in Mon State, killing three troops and capturing four alive

Hundreds of Myanmar military troops occupied a Mon State village after a coalition of armed resistance groups raided a local police station, killing three junta personnel and capturing four alive on Saturday.

Members of two forces: the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), an ethnic armed group, and the People’s Defence Force (PDF), which operates under the publicly mandated National Unity Government, jointly attacked the police station in the village of Chaung Hnit Khwa in Kyaikmayaw Township. They refer to their coalition in the area as the Red Dragon resistance column. 

The KNLA and the Kyaikmayaw chapter of the PDF launched the assault at around 5:30am, according to a PDF source who was involved in the raid. Two junta aircraft arrived at the clash site just after 7am and bombed the area surrounding the village, he said, initially trapping Chaung Hnit Khwa’s 1,000 residents in the community. 

The village is located some 27 miles southeast of Kyaikmayaw town, and next to a nearby bridge connecting Mon and Karen states. The PDF source explained that the Chaung Hnit Khwa bridge is manned on the Karen State side by a Myanmar military-backed Border Guard Force (BGF) checkpoint, and that a junta police outpost is positioned on the Mon State side.

Three policemen were killed in the attack: Cpt Hla Kyaw Oo, and two police privates. Forces under the Red Dragon column also confiscated four M16 guns, one AK-47, and ammunition. 

“This was the first major battle there, but I have also heard that revolutionary forces have been using drones to attack them,” the PDF officer told Myanmar Now. He added that the KNLA and PDF had ambushed the BGF post at the bridge in April, reportedly killing five troops, but not encountering a serious clash. 

According to locals, the BGF unit operating around Chaung Hnit Khwa is under the command of Battalion 1021, which is headed by Saw Htay Naing, a veteran of the force who was accused more than 10 years ago in local media of confiscating hundreds of acres of land from locals in Karen State’s Kawkareik Township and reselling it for profit. 

Soon after resistance forces left the village, around 200 regime troops arrived and started raiding the area, according to Cpt Saw Eh, a spokesperson for the resistance column. Among them were BGF soldiers and members of the Pyu Saw Htee militia, which is armed and trained by the Myanmar military. 

“They started stationing themselves in the village after our attack. [The military] also bombed the area from aircrafts and carried out clearance before occupying the whole village,” Cpt Saw Eh told Myanmar Now on Monday.

After being trapped during the airstrike, Chaung Hnit Khwa’s residents fled the occupation, with few returning the next day, the resistance column spokesperson, citing information he had received from locals. 

The Chaung Hnit Khwa bridge was also reopened, with junta troops allowing locals to pass. 

Six houses in the village were reportedly destroyed during the Saturday airstrike and two locals were wounded, but further details about the extent of the damage and injuries were not known at the time of reporting.

Cpt Saw Eh said that tension around Chaung Hnit Khwa remained high, with further fighting likely to break out.

“A reconnaissance airplane has been flying around the area and I think they are planning an attack,” he explained. 

Several military vehicles were seen patrolling nearby villages on Sunday afternoon, with soldiers randomly firing their guns along the road. An elderly man travelling by motorcycle was shot and brought by a local rescue team to a hospital in the Mon State capital of Mawlamyine, another local resistance source said. 

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