Three civilians were shot and killed in Loikaw Township, Karenni (Kayah) State, on Tuesday morning when troops from a Myanmar army convoy opened fire on the area following an attack on their vehicles, according to locals.
The soldiers, who were travelling from Moebye, near the Karenni border in southern Shan State, fired from within their cars along the Moebye-Loikaw road between Kone Thar and Nwar La Woe villages at 7am.
The casualties included a 17-year-old boy from Kone Thar, a 20-year-old woman, and a man named Min Swe Htike, 42, from Nwar La Woe. The names of the first two victims could not be confirmed at the time of reporting.
A spokesperson in the Progressive Karenni People’s Force, a local monitoring group, said that he heard more people were wounded.
“A friend of mine was shot in the leg. The military fired the gunshots into the middle of a market, so there could be several injuries,” he told Myanmar Now.
A man who retrieved the body of Min Swe Htike near Nwar La Woe said that he appeared to have been killed with a small assault weapon.
“He was shot with a small gun on the left side of his back,” the source recalled.
Citing eyewitnesses, another local said that the junta convoy had been attacked with explosive devices and light weapons, damaging five trucks. It is not known how many vehicles were in the convoy in total.
No Karenni resistance organization has released a statement acknowledging or claiming responsibility for the reported strike on the junta unit.
One day earlier, a 40-year-old man from Pa Dar Nyay, also in Loikaw Township and on the same road, was also shot dead by junta troops.
The military has been carrying out major offensives and airstrikes in Karenni State, an area largely dominated by resistance forces.
