At least six people were killed when 50 Myanmar army troops hiding in a gravel-filled dump truck opened fire on the checkpoint of a resistance force in Sagaing Region’s eastern Shwebo Township earlier this week, local sources said.
The unit reportedly travelled six miles from their base in the town of Kyauk Myaung to Ti Pin village, where they attacked the post at 4:30pm on Tuesday.
“It wasn’t a clash—they raided the village,” an information officer for a resistance force active in the area told Myanmar Now. “There are quarries nearby. Dump trucks frequent the area to transport the rocks and gravel. They entered the village impersonating quarry workers.”
The checkpoint in question was manned by Ti Pin’s People’s Defence Team, whose local chapters are known by the Burmese acronym of Pa Ka Pha.
Four Pa Ka Pha members were killed in the assault: Phoe Aung, 33; San Wai Phyo and Waing Chit, both 25; and Nyi Zaw, 21.
Their bodies, which were seen by eyewitnesses on the day of the attack, were missing when the search team went to retrieve them on Thursday. At that time, the attacking junta forces—and three trucks of reinforcements—ended a three-day occupation of Ti Pin that followed the ambush.
Members of the resistance said that they then began searching the village and clearing landmines left by the military.
The resistance fighters also found the body of a 50-year-old Ti Pin local named Daw Lin.
“Daw Lin was shot in the arm, but she was too afraid to come out for help. She bled to death,” a combat leader from a Shwebo Township resistance group present at the scene explained.
During the raid on Ti Pin, the Myanmar army soldiers burned the Pa Ka Pha checkpoint and nearly 150 of the village’s 450 homes, many of which reportedly belonged to members of the resistance.
“They selectively set fire to the houses: they torched the homes of defence team leaders and supporters,” a resident of Ti Pin told Myanmar Now. “I believe that they had a local informant. We were ambushed because someone from the village tipped them off.”
The body of another Ti Pin civilian—Tin Maung Oo, 55—was pictured on junta propaganda websites, but had not been located by the search team at the time or reporting. Members of the resistance speculated that the soldiers may have placed his body, as well as those of the village defence team members, inside the houses and torched.
Several people from Ti Pin were still missing at the time of reporting.
After the junta unit left the village, another column raided the neighbouring community of Kyauk O Myaing, three miles away. The attack forced more locals to flee the area and caused the resistance forces’ search of Ti Pin to be suspended, according to local sources.
