Soldiers opened fire on people in Yangon’s Thaketa Township on Saturday, killing a 15-year-old boy and injuring one woman.
The armed forces, reportedly in full uniform, took over the township’s main roads: Myin Taw Thar, Shwe Pyi Thar and Zabuthiri, shooting their guns and shouting that they would “not go back until the people are dead,” eyewitnesses told Myanmar Now.
Aung Kaung Htet, a Grade 11 high school student waiting for schools to reopen following the Covid-19 pandemic, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head. Another woman was shot in the leg.
Residents of Thaketa said that soldiers asked them if they were “envious” of Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial Yangon township where a bloody crackdown by the junta’s armed forces on protesters and workers has killed dozens.
One local told Myanmar Now that a soldier said, “you want your places to be burned, don’t you? We’ll burn the entire street to the ground.”
The resident speculated that the soldiers were amplifying both their threats and violence since youth in Thaketa had fought back against them on Friday. Young people had used Molotov cocktails in self-defense against an attack by the regime’s forces on people protesting the February 1 military coup.
Another local reported that the armed forces destroyed and damaged cars, shops, and CCTV cameras. The soldiers who terrorized the residents of Thaketa on Saturday were in full uniform, he said, but added that those who destroyed the CCTV cameras were wearing plainclothes.
