Resistance targets junta-trained militias in series of strikes in central Myanmar

Resistance fighters based some 70 miles southwest of Mandalay claimed they had forced civilian militias trained and armed by the junta out of local villages without a fight this week. A Monday raid on the village of Sin Hpyu, Taungtha Township—located south of the Ayeyarwady River and 15 miles west of Taungtha, Mandalay Region on the Nyaung-U‒Myingyan road—targeted the home of militia commander Win Ko, according to local resistance sources. The Pyu Saw Htee militias, made up of civilians or retired military personnel recruited from local populations, are armed and trained by the military as auxiliary forces to fight against the armed resistance in Myanmar’s heartland. “There was no combat. The Pyu Saw Htee members fled when they heard our guns and abandoned their weapons,” said an officer of the Taungtha Township People’s Defence Team (PDT), a local resistance group. “Their numbers are few,” the PDT officer said, referring to the Myanmar military’s presence in the region. “But they ally with Pyu Saw Htee militias from Myingyan and Hta Naung Kone village to intimidate the people and undermine the revolution.” Resistance forces from Myingyan and Nyaung-U joined the Taungtha Township PDT on the raid, the PDT officer said, which resulted in the seizure of firearms and ammunition from the junta-backed militia. Resistance forces released photos of weapons seized from the Pyu Saw Htee during a raid on December 30. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—the armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma, which revived its activities in Myanmar since the coup after a three-decade hiatus—carried out its own attack in the same Mandalay Region township a day earlier. Members of the PLA shot and killed junta air force captain Kyi Phe Lin and an associate as they sat in a teashop in Aye village, Taungtha Township on Sunday. In a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, the PLA also said they had ambushed a local Pyu Saw Htee patrol unit in November. Resistance forces carried out similar attacks on Pyu Saw Htee militias in the villages of Ta Pin Kan and Tamikethar villages last year. Taungtha Township has a population of nearly 250,000 and is made up of the six urban wards of Taungtha and more than 240 villages. Taungtha is the hometown of Aung Thaung, a prominent leader of the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party and has generally been a political stronghold for the military. Resistance forces have expanded their territory in the area despite the military’s maintenance of supply routes linking Taungtha to another military stronghold, the town of Meiktila some 40 miles to the southeast. Unable to deploy enough infantry forces for ground operations, the military deployed parachute bombs for the first time in the village of Za Yat Gyi, some eight miles east of Taungtha, on December 25. Earlier in 2024, resistance groups in the area including the People’s Defence Forces under the command of the National Unity Government, launched the Myingyan District Special Operation in the area of Mandalay Region south of the Ayeyarwady, carrying out offensive operations sabotaging the junta’s administration of the area. A triangle formed by the towns of Taungtha, Natogyi, and Myingyan has become a relative stronghold for anti-junta resistance forces in Mandalay Region, which first arose throughout Myanmar in response to the military’s 2021 coup and shooting of nonviolent protestors.

Resistance targets junta-trained militias in series of strikes in central Myanmar

The latest of the assaults—most of which have struck and driven off Pyu Saw Htee members based in rural villages—resulted in the death of an air force officer

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