The junta’s forces destroyed the last remaining building in Ye-U Township’s Chan Thar village last week—a school—in their fifth attack on the community since last year, locals said.
Chan Thar was raided by the military in January, as well as three times in 2022.
In the most recent assault, carried out on May 4, the soldiers reportedly used dynamite to blow up the village’s high school, before torching the remains of the structure.
While the high school had not been operational since the February 2021 military coup, internally displaced persons (IDPs) from other nearby villages had been known to shelter at the site, a Ye-U Township local said.
During previous assaults on Chan Thar, junta troops set fire to Assumption Church—a Catholic place of worship built in 1894—as well as all 500 households, home to 2,000 people.
“Nothing is left of the village now,” the Ye-U man told Myanmar Now, noting that only a cemetery remained in Chan Thar.
The raid was part of an attack on western Ye-U that included Kan Pauk, Myin Pauk, Htan Pin Kone villages and started on May 3, perpetrated by troops stationed in the township’s administrative centre.
An officer within the anti-junta People’s Administration Team for Ye-U Township said that there was an exchange of gunfire between local resistance forces and the military during the May 4 raid on Chan Thar.
“Our battalions fired at them when they entered Chan Thar village in the early morning but [the junta soldiers] proceeded to torch the high school. It was the only major building left in the village,” he explained.
Some 3,000 people from around seven area villages, including Chan Thar, were displaced by the recent series of attacks, he added.
“They are staying in monasteries which do not have enough food for them,” said the administrative officer, who is also trying to fundraise for the IDPs. “Locals from other nearby villages have had to provide them with meal packs.”
The junta force in question left Chan Thar the morning after the attack, advancing into neighbouring Depayin Township. Their activities in the days that followed were not confirmed at the time of reporting.
